SYNOPSIS

The lecture will discuss the adopted practice of ground movement and damage assessment as adopted on Crossrail in London (Elizabeth line ) and the future challenges of metro construction due to increased congestion in an urban environment with an emphasis on the importance of early planning and optimisation of alignment. Some of the major advances in geotechnical modelling over the past 20 years for determining ground movements will be discussed but at the same time noting what we are potentially forgetting in the rush to use these advanced soil models .The increasing challenges for the geotechnical designer including technical, commercial and contractual are outlined and, slightly controversially the author poses the question “are we designing things better than we did 30 years ago“


SPEAKER'S PROFILE

Currently John is resident in Kuala Lumpur as technical advisor on the restarted reference design for the 51km long Kuala Lumpur MRT line 3. He is also leading the geotechnical design for the Three Airports Rail Project in Thailand. From 2021 to date John has been providing expert opinion on the collapse of twin 5.8m diameter segmental bored metro tunnels in South Korea. Until 2021 he was resident in Singapore and project manager for the Changi Airport Inter Terminal Tunnels including a 12m diameter tunnel. Previously he was project manager for the KVMRT line 2 reference design consisting of 14kms of an underground metro through the CBD of Kuala Lumpur and was Project Director on a number of metro projects in Singapore and in the east Asian region including railways in Hong Kong , Vietnam ,Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia and Thailand. He is a past chair of the HKIE Geotechnical Division and has published widely on geotechnical aspects of design.