GCG’s Dr Gary Choy & Dr Barry New published a paper on construction impact assessment of utility assets
GCG’s Senior Partner Dr Gary Choy and Associate Dr Barry New have published a technical paper entitled “Tunnelling and general construction impacts on utility pipelines” in Feb 2022 issue of “Tunnels & Tunnelling International”. This paper serves as a broad guide to the assessment process of the impact of various construction activities, including tunnelling, on the utility assets.
It builds upon the content of Dr Barry New’s 2017 Harding Memorial lecture (which can be viewed via ICE archived events, click here, published as a paper in Feb 2019) and reflects upon the techniques used on numerous recent projects including HS2 and Thames Tideway.
It introduces The Six Cs’ Principles (i.e., Conditions of assets, Calculations, Consequences of damage, Control (and preparedness), Consent, and Conciliation) of pipeline risk assessment, which form key components of a 3-stage assessment process, which was developed by the authors’ experience over the last two decades.
The paper highlights damaging consequences of asset failures, and illustrates various failure mechanisms (e.g., see the figure). The ultimate goal of the assessment process is to achieve a ’reasonable and optimised’ solution which is acceptable to both parties (i.e., the asset owner and the developer), is truly ALARP and most importantly, takes a holistic view of the risk.
The above (Feb 2019 & 2022) papers can be accessed via the following links:
https://www.tunnelsonline.info/features/tunnel-construction-impacts-on-utility-pipelines-6973933/