Direct by Design
Highlights of the WTC2023 and its 49th ITA Annual General Assembly
In the warmth of the sun and Greek hospitality, WTC2023 in Athens has been a memorable success. Up to 2,000 delegates and more than 180 exhibitors attended and there was a programme of events, sessions and scientific papers to keep all industry professionals fully engaged across the seven days of the gathering. Of the 78 Member Nations of the ITA (International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association) more than 50 were represented in person at the two sessions of the General Assembly where important business was discussed, voted on and decided.
• Pakistan was welcomed as the 79th Member Nation of the ITA with a strong delegation from Pakistan giving a clear indication of the need in the country to expand its underground infrastructure beyond the limited
TBM and majority drill+blast activity for hydropower development. The urgent need now for underground engineering knowhow is for national transportation and urban water management and flood mitigation.
• Canada was selected to host the 2026 WTC World Tunnel Congress in the city of Montreal gaining the majority Member Nation votes from a spirited and needing invitation from South Africa to host in Capetown. There is much to do to support development of underground infrastructure in Africa, particularly across sub-Saharan Africa where only four countries are ITA Member Nations – South Africa, Lesotho, Kenya and Nigeria.
• In 2024 the next Sir Alan Muir Wood ITA Lecture, the 14th in the series, will be delivered by Professor Priscilla Nelson of the USA and currently a member of the engineering faculty at the Colorado School of Mines.
More than 50 of the now 79 ITA Member Nations were represented at the 49th General Assembly
MAY 2023
Shani Wallis, TunnelTalk
All are welcomed to WTC2023 in the plenary Opening Ceremony
• An in-person symposium for the presentation of the 2023 ITA Awards will be hosted by Member Nation India in the city of Mumbai on 2-4 November
• WTC 2024 in April next year will be hosted by Member Nation China in the city of Shenzhen where it will host also celebration of the 50th General Assembly and Anniversary of the ITA since its foundation in 1974.
• WTC 2025 will be hosted by Member Nation Sweden in Stockholm and Member Nation Belgium declared its proposal to host the WTC in 2027 to be voted on at the General Assembly in China next year.
At the 2023 General Assembly, the Executive Council chaired by ITA President Arnold Dix introduced to Member Nations new proposals for the funding of the Association and to strengthen its financial status and future revenues. These included increasing the tiered fees for Member Nations; expanding membership to include a tier for more individual members; and applying a cost for access to ITA publications for non-members which are currently free to all. Contribution to the ITA from the hosting of the annual World Tunnel Congresses will remain the largest source of revenue for the ITA with an estimated €310,000 forecast in the budgets from each WTC to 2026. It was cancellation of the WTC in 2020 in Malaysia due to the Covid pandemic, and again in 2021, when the WTC in Denmark was moved to September 2022 (Member Nation Mexico withdrawing its selection for the 2022 event) that highlighted the vulnerability of the ITA finances. These events pushed the finances into
losses from which the Association is still recovering.
The Executive Council also welcomed a new Executive Director of the Secretariate with Roland Herr set to take over the role from Olivier Vion who has led the Secretariate for some 30 years. During a year of transition, Vion will prepare ExCo for the General Assembly in Shenzhen next year and spearhead the ITA 2024 50th Anniversary celebration at the WTC.
Within the programme of the Congress, there were three particular highlights:
On Monday morning, as part of the plenary Opening Session, Professor Lord Robert Mair of Cambridge University in the UK moderated a round table discussion on the topic Underground Space for Mobility: Frontier Technologies with panellists Marco Rosso of Switzerland and President of the Supervisory Board of the Cargo Sour Terrain project; Kancheepuram Gunalan of the USA and 2020 President of the ASCE American Society of Civil Engineers; Tarcisio Celestino of Brazil and a past President of the ITA; and Martin Knights of the UK and also a past President of the ITA. The discussion presented the strengths and weaknesses of the underground engineering community in preparing for a future of engineered infrastructure and for introduction of new technologies already available and those that are to come. These include the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning; the advance of robots and remotely controlled systems; new developments in materials and equipment to lower the carbon footprint of the civil construction industry; and the preparedness of the industry to build new and adapt existing underground structures and networks for the needs of the future. In a poll conducted through the WTC internet app, a large percentage of the audience thought that AI and machine learning will have the most impact and influence on the future of infrastructure development and that the introduction of new materials and technologies will be most important in influencing how underground infrastructure will be constructed in the future.
Another ground-breaking session for this 2023 WTC was a session that discussed the role of Women in Tunnelling. As well as a wide-ranging discussion about the
Members of the round table panel discuss Underground Space for Mobility: Frontier Technologies
Jenny Yan, immediate past President and first female President of the ITA presents to the Women in Tunnelling session
experiences of professional women engineers in the consulting and construction fields of the industry there were contributions from male colleagues whose comments were also revealing. Where the women spoke of work/life balance struggles, particularly for women engineers who are also mothers, the men – one the father of aspiring young women engineers and another the husband of a woman engineer with more credentials than he – spoke of how women can be dismissed or shouted down in meetings; of how their ideas given scant consideration show up later as brilliant ideas in the mouths of male colleagues; and of how well educated and talented women engineers met glass ceilings and fail to be promoted to higher management roles. A point was made that while women were considered fairly well represented in the ITA and on its Executive Council, women were conspicuous by their absence in the plenary Opening Session of the WTC programme. Also, while discussions did centre on the experience of women in the industry, it did in parts expand to include those engineers, male and female, who are discriminated against due to their ethnicity, nationality, age and/ or those with disabilities. For future WTCs perhaps EDI – Equality, Diversity, Inclusion – would be a more encompassing title for the annual session and debate.
For the technical tours, TunnelTalk made a visit to the Athens Metro Line 4 construction works where the first of two 9.5m diameter EPBMs from Herrenknecht was in the launch shaft and ready to begin excavation of its part of the 12.8km all-underground, singletube double-track running tunnel for the new line and its 15 new underground stations (more to report in a following article). Others joined the tour to the underground mine where Pentelikon Marble, used to build the famous Parthenon of Athens in the 5th Century B.C., is still mined and quarried. A fascinating visit with a new appreciation for this creation of underground space was the feedback.
Yes, it was enjoyable and memorable WTC and a chance for the international WTC underground space engineering and construction community to get back to something nearing normal after the two years of imposed isolation due to the Covid pandemic and a cautious WTC gathering in Copenhagen last year.
Just a few extra points to note. The venue for the Congress was a mix of concert halls and exhibition space spread through different buildings and across several floors. It was difficult to find your way and the maps to assist were difficult to navigate and were missing important information - such as location of the bathrooms and the lunch and coffee break areas. Exhibitors were also spread out over several floors, with some outside in a tent and others tucked in nooks and cranes. All exhibitors, all in one space, on one floor, under one roof in a purpose designed congress and exhibition space should be among the vital criteria for selecting hosts for future WTCs. The Poster Sessions are also an important addition to the WTCs for those papers accepted but without room for presentation in the Technical Sessions. The Poster Sessions were staged on screens and located on a separate floor that had little footfall for those who found it by accident or through perseverance or inquiry. Lastly, the space provided for distribution of the magazines that serve the industry was poor. A table on which all were piled along with empty coffee cups, discarded leaflets and packaging from the delegate bags and mixed in with brochures added by companies and exhibitors. A proper literature area with sections for each of the Media Partner magazines and racks also for company literature and information about the publications produced by the ITA and its Working Groups would be a very welcome and valuable addition to the WTCs and their delegates.
So following Athens 2023, the WTC and ITA General Assembly meets next in Shenzhen, China from 19-25 April 2024; in Stockholm, Sweden from 9-15 May 2025; and in Montreal, Canada from 15-21 May 2026.
We will see you all there and then.
TunnelTalk references
• WTC2023 Athens preview – May 2023
• TunnelTalk Special Edition – Canada
• Early TBM
for the Athens Metro
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drives
Technical visits to Athens Metro Line 4 (above) and to the Pentelikon Marble underground quarry
