technical talk

18 May 2023 (Thursday)

6:00pm (Manila Time)

Live via Zoom 

This talk is an introduction to all things trenchless. James will identify and explain the most common trenchless technologies and provide an overview of their technical concepts, challenges and constraints. He will identify their differences compared to typical tunneling methods and will also explain the differences in accepted techniques and technologies in different regions around the globe.

James will take you through his decision-making process from inception to commissioning and beyond for a trenchless crossing and you should expect to gain an understanding of what it takes to design and construct these little siblings of the tunneling world.

James is a Tunnel Engineer in Arup HK with 8 years experience in tunnelling and ground engineering. He has a specialism in trenchless technologies and microtunnelling and has worked on various projects in the USA, Canada, UK, Spain, Hong Kong, Australia and the Philippines. 

James was part of the first dedicated Arup microtunnelling team and has experience of numerous microtunnelling techniques across many modalities including fresh and foul water, gas, electric, cable landfalls, drainage and access tunnels. He specialises in pipe jacking and segmental lining design.

James has a passion for sustainable development and asset preservation and can often be found crawling around inspecting existing small tunnels to extend their life.

20 April 2023 (Thursday)

6:00pm (Manila Time)

Live via Zoom 

The speaker will explain the history of the Channel Tunnel and the various failed attempts and the final successful construction and completion of the 50.46km subsea rail link from the United Kingdom to Europe.  He will talk from the perspective of his early introduction to tunnelling after graduation and some of the key aspects of the completion of the tunnel.

Mr. Galvez is currently a planning manager for First Balfour and has been with the company for over 13 years. He has worked on all tunneling projects of the company, first of which is the Novaliches Balara Aqueduct 4 and has guided the project during the onset of the Pandemic. 

Currently, he has returned to the project and has been tasked to oversee to the completion of the remaining tunnel rectification works. 

He is also involved in another tunneling project - the Early Works of Aya Pumped Storage Expansion Project. 

16 March 2023 (Thursday)

6:00pm (Manila Time)

Live at Manila Elks Club and online via Zoom

 Our speaker will talk about the technical difficulties and constraints of the flying launch approach for TBM’s and will present the benefits and the risks associated with this type of procedure 

Mr. Babagay is currently a senior tunnel engineer with over 18 years experience in large scale civil engineering projects. He works for Leighton Asia Ltd and has had an illustrious career working on various underground tunnel projects in a variety of countries around the world from Australia, Singapore, Qatar, and the Philippines.

He has worked on various tunnel projects in Singapore for the LTA on various Metro Projects. He has also worked on the Goldline Metro in Qatar as well as on various tenders in Sydney for the Metro West as well as various MRT projects in Singapore. 

He is experienced in implementation and operation of a range of TBM’s from 4.93m to 7.59m diameter. 

16 February 2023 (Thursday)

6:00pm (Manila Time)

Live at Manila Elks Club and online via Zoom 

The speaker will explain the history of the Channel Tunnel and the various failed attempts and the final successful construction and completion of the 50.46km subsea rail link from the United Kingdom to Europe.  He will talk from the perspective of his early introduction to tunnelling after graduation and some of the key aspects of the completion of the tunnel.

Antony Di Rosa is First Balfour's Head of Rail Business 

Antony will explain the history of the Channel Tunnel and the various failed attempts and the final successful construction and completion of the 50.46km subsea rail link from the United Kingdom to Europe. 

He will talk from the perspective of his early introduction to tunneling after graduation and some of the key aspects of the completion of the tunnel.

29 November 2022 (Tuesday)

6:30pm (Manila Time)

The Atrium, Enderun, Taguig City 

The Philippine Tunneling Society is delighted to invite you to our Christmas Dinner Party, which will take place on Tuesday, November 29, 2022, at The Atrium in Enderun, Taguig City.

The celebration will begin with a refreshing cocktail at 6:30 p.m., followed by a buffet and plated dinner at 7:00 p.m. We also have a special general knowledge quiz with exciting prizes for the winning team!

Prices for members and their spouses are Php 2,500 and Php 3,500 for non-members. Members, spouses, friends, and family are all welcome to join!

17 November 2022 (Thursday)

6:00pm (Manila Time)

Live at Manila Elks Club and online via Zoom 

Singapore Standard SS 674: 2021– Design of fibre concrete structures is the first national standard for the design of fibre concrete structures in Asia published in August 2021 in Singapore.

This webinar will provide some guidance on the use of SS674: 2021 in the design of fibre concrete.

Regional Technical Manager

Bekaert

 He has 33 years of civil engineering experience. Expert in fibre reinforced concrete 1998 to present, involved in over 22 fibre reinforced sprayed concrete tunnel linings and over 20 fibre reinforced concrete precast segmental and cast concrete tunnel lining projects. 

Member of the working group on Singapore Standard SS 674 2021 since Jan 2019 Domain Expert for Sprayed Concrete and Fibre Reinforced Concrete under Intelligent National Productivity and Quality Specification Singapore since Mar 2019 and Jan 2020 respectively. Since Mar 2021 elected as Vice President of Society for Rock Mechanics Engineering Geology (Singapore). 

20 October 2022 (Thursday)

6:00pm (Manila Time)

Live at Manila Elks Club and online via Zoom 

In this technical talk, the thought process required to select the appropriate Ground  Conditioning regime for any given alignment will be presented:

• Discuss the various different foams available – when and where each should be used
• Discuss when polymers should be used, and the various types
• Discuss what to do when ground conditioning by itself is not enough
• Give a few tips on how to ensure the whole process runs smoothly
• Conclude by discussing the worldwide trend towards eco-friendly solutions to ground conditioning

Regional Manager

Underground Technical Team Asia Pacific

MAPEI Far East Pte Ltd.

• B.Eng, C.Eng, ACSM, FIMMM.
• Born in the UK many moons ago.
• Graduated from the Camborne School of Mines. Worked in UK, Jersey (The original one), Pakistan and have spent the last 24 years based in Singapore.
• Given many presentations/seminars/training around the world (Inc’ >five at ITA) on various topics related to tunneling.
• Cornish Tin Mining, Channel Tunnel, Heathrow Express, Jersey Stormwater Project, Port Qasim Ground Freezing, Various TBM Projects in Singapore as Tunnel Manager.
• Joined MAPEI in 2005 as technical support and numerous other roles.
• Specialities include are: Making TBMs go faster and more efficiently using ground Conditioning; Slurry TBM Mud Engineering; Shaft Sinking; Ground Freezing.

18 August 2022 (Thursday)

6:00pm (Manila Time)

Live at Manila Elks Club and online via Zoom 

Our speaker, Jeremy Lee, Deputy General Manager, Sales, from Herrenknecht Asia  Headquarters-Singapore will talk about the latest developments in shield TBM selections & design for mechanized tunneling. 

Deputy General Manager, Sales

Herrenknecht Asia Headquarters, Singapore

Jeremy has more than 18 years of experience in the construction industry, especially in the area of underground tunneling works. He holds a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the National University of Singapore.

He has been employed by Herrenknecht Singapore for 17 years and has direct sales expertise in countries such as Singapore, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. He also has experience in marketing and business development for new markets, including those in the Philippines, South Korea, Vietnam, and Japan. Since 2010, Jeremy has been actively involved in the market development of South Korea. He was responsible for the biggest slurry type shield machine with a diameter of Ø 14m and the biggest hard rock machine, Gripper TBM, with a diameter of Ø 11.6m for Korean projects.

Jeremy has strong product knowledge of equipment for mechanized tunneling methods and related auxiliary equipment. He is closely involved from the feasibility stage, where suitable machine design and technical specifications have to be specified and customized for each project, to the Design stage where the machine's final design is done.

21 July 2022 (Thursday)

4:00pm (Manila Time)

Live online via Zoom

The Davao Bypass will provide an important improvement to the transport logistics for Davao and the wider urban areas It will reduce existing traffic congestion by offering an alternative for through traffic to avoid the Davao City urban center This will improve the economic and social development of Davao and Mindanao.

The bypass tunnel which will be the longest Road Tunnel in the Philippines once completed at about 2.3 km and will have an important role to unite the east and west side communities, existing and under development, which are currently separated by a mountain It will be a dual 2 lane highway.

The talk will outline the overall layout of the bypass and present the overall concept and design of the tunnel including the geology and ground conditions and specific challenges and risks for the tunneling.

Civil Engineer Tunnels / Underground Space Specialist

Nippon Civic Consulting Engineers Co. Ltd

Noto San has over 31 years of experience in Civil Engineering and is a Professional Civil Tunnel engineer from Japan and has been working on various tunnel design projects in the Philippines and the region for the last 10 years.

He is a graduate of Kansai University and he has specialized in the development of underground space design. 

He has been involved in the initial surveys for the Dalton Pass East Alternative Road that included some tunnel sections and also the SUBIC Freeport Expressway ( SFEX) tunnel advice.

He is currently the Tunneling Engineer of the Davao City Bypass project and has been the acting Project Manager for the project. He was responsible for the design of the Davao City Bypass 2.3 km tunnel and he is currently involved in the Construction stage of the project dealing with queries and site related issues. 

19 May 2022 (Thursday)

6:00pm (Manila Time)

This talk will discuss current and prospective rail projects as well as tunneling opportunities in Metro Manila and the Philippines. The event will be a simultaneous live presentation with an online broadcast.

Usec Timothy John Batan has been working in the transportation department for five years, first as a Senior Project Development Officer for DOTr Planning, Project Development, and Private-Public Partnership Unit in 2015 where he worked with on several maritime, airport development, port modernization, and varying mass transit projects until he was eventually appointed as an Assistant Secretary for Railways in June 2017, and again as the Undersecretary for Railways in February 2018. 

As the Undersecretary for Railways, he led the sector in implementing decades-delayed rail projects, expanding the rail network from 77 km to 1203 km, increasing number of awarded rail contracts, securing financing worth 1.9B pesos in ODA, increasing disbursements, and fixing the MRT-3 in record time. His role has been pivotal in the fulfillment of the Build! Build! Build!’s promise of a more comfortable life, more comfortable commuting, mass transport experience for the Filipinos.

3 December 2021 (Friday)

5:00pm — 6:00pm (Manila Time)

Metro Manila is moving into a period of rapid urban underground development with the implementation of the Metro Manila Subway and Makati Subway systems, we are also looking at various forms of underground infrastructure with sewage and water supply tunnels to service the growth and development of the city. These system compete with the above ground infrastructure for their space and alignments. We already have numerous deep basements and other obstructions in the ground that provide constraints to exploiting and maximising the benefit of underground solutions.

The talk will outline some examples from overseas where integrated underground urban planning has been undertaken to better utilise, coordinate and preserve the underground for the benefit of the city and its population. 

Mark is a Director in Arup’s Manila & Hong Kong offices and has over 33 years experience in the field of Engineering Geology, Geotechnical, Underground Space and Tunnelling related projects. He has carried out Project Management on various infrastructure projects from large scale MTR, HK and Philippine Government projects to local private as well as regional scale studies. He has led teams of specialists in Tunnelling, Civil Engineering, Renewable Energy, Engineering Geology, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Geotechnical work in Hong Kong, Philippines and the East Asia region.

Mark was the Project Manager for the Territory Wide Study on Urban Underground Space in Hong Kong as well as the Long Term Strategy for Rock Cavern Development in Hong Kong. These projects sought to identify strategies, approaches and policy initiatives to facilitate future underground space development to provide a sustainable source of land supply while also providing better connectivity and improved amenities in existing areas of the city

He has authored and co-authored over 20 publications, with topics ranging from Rock Cavern Development, Urban Underground Space, Tunnelling Projects, Landslides to GIS related solutions.

17 November 2021 (Wednesday)

5:00pm — 6:00pm (Manila Time)

The development of a fibre concrete mix for Singapore Circle Line Phase 6 - This presentation will discuss the steps taken to arrive at the fibre concrete mix that was adopted for the precast segments of the Singapore Circle Line Phase 6 contracts C 882 and C 885.

QA/QC of fibre concrete in accordance with Singapore Standard SS 674 2021 - Design of fibre concrete structures This presentation will take a close look at the QA/QC requirements for fibre concrete as detailed in the first national standard for the design of fibre concrete structures in Asia published in August 2021 in Singapore.

GAN Cheng Chian has 32 years of civil engineering experience. Expert in fibre reinforced concrete 1998 to present, involved in over 22 fibre reinforced sprayed concrete tunnel linings and over 20 fibre reinforced concrete precast segmental and cast concrete tunnel lining projects. 

Member of the working group on Singapore Standard SS 674 2021 since Jan 2019 Domain Expert for Sprayed Concrete and Fibre Reinforced Concrete under Intelligent National Productivity and Quality Specification Singapore since Mar 2019 and Jan 2020 respectively. Since Mar 2021 elected as Vice President of Society for Rock Mechanics Engineering Geology (Singapore). 

15 October 2021 (Friday)

5:00pm — 6:00pm (Manila Time)

Allan Patdu is a Civil and Sanitary Engineer with over 40 years of experience in the water

supply and treatment industry. A mainstay in the water industry here in the Philippines, his experience has mostly been in construction and operations, handling the wastewater

expansion program for MWSS and leading the team for the expansion in Vietnam of Manila Water. Meanwhile, Rod Scott has over 45 years of international construction experience, working in projects all over the world for Balfour-Beatty companies. He was appointed as the Project Manager by the Novabala JV in August of 2020 and has managed the project through trying times of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the project achieving the Tunnel Breakthrough after 7.2km of tunneling in August this year.

24 February 2021 (Wednesday)

3:00pm — 4:00pm (Manila Time)

Tunnel projects executed with TBM can become a real challenge when the combination of complex geological conditions and dense urban environment appears at the same time.  The presentation describes how the project teams have dealt with the geological, environmental and archaeological requirements, achieving at the same time outstanding TBM excavation production rates that provides great benefits to the client and contractor.  

Fernando has developed his professional career acquiring a broad experience on major civil engineering projects across the world for over 22 years. Fernando has experience as Project Director with the P3, design-build and traditional models, giving him the ability to manage multicultural and multidiscipline projects throughout their different phases. His actual role as ACCIONA Global BD Director Specialized Business Unit Tunnels & Railways, integrates all his tunnel previous experience and leads ACCIONA's tunnel sales and client-relationship management, tracks new markets and emerging trends and guides long-term objectives to meet ACCIONA's business needs and requirements, oriented to innovation, sustainability and reduction of low carbon emissions. 

23 October 2020 (Friday)

3:00pm — 4:00pm (Manila Time)

The presentation will be hosted by Bekaert, a global leader of steel fibre reinforcement, and represented in the Philippines by Maccaferri. It will cover the recent development of steel fibre reinforcement in Metro Tunnels in SEA and Oceania. It will provide an introduction to Steel Fibre Reinforced Concrete (SFRC), new fibre technologies, design guides for designing segments and other applications, followed by several cases studies in SEA like KVMRT Malaysia and MRT Singapore. The Webinar will finish with the contractor’s perspective from two recently completed projects in Australia in the North West Rail Link and Sydney Metro projects.

Speakers for this interesting and for the Philippines timely event are Brad Boardman,

Area Sales Manager SEA/Oceania of Bekaert with more than 23 years’ experience

in Concrete Operations and 12 years delivering SFRC solutions in tunnel

projects in Australia and SEA. Gan Cheng Chian, Technical Manager SEA/ Oceania

of Bekaert, a Civil Engineer with more than 22-years’ experience in design and

technical support of SFRC solutions based in Singapore. The third speaker is Jeremy

Glasgow Tunnel Engineer and currently Construction Director of Sydney Metro

with 20 years’ experience in design and delivery of two recent Metro tunnel projects

in Australia.

(Conditions of Contract for Underground Works) 

25 September 2020 (FRIDAY)

6:00pm — 7:00pm (Manila Time)

In this hour long seminar, the speakers, we invited two specialist construction lawyers from Pinsent Masons to give us a brief introduction of the new Emerald Book, published by the Fédération Internationale des Ingénieurs-Conseils (FIDIC) in a joint endeavour with the International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association (ITA-AITES). 

The Conditions of Contract for Underground Works designed by the Contractor is unique in the FIDIC Suite of Contracts, not only because it is the first contract designed to be used for tunnelling and indeed for any works that include a significant geotechnical uncertainty, but because the allocation of underground risks are intended to be shared by reference to a Geotechnical Baseline Report (GBR).

These Conditions reflect the fundamental principle which underlies all FIDIC contracts, namely balanced risk allocation between the parties to the Contract.  The speakers will share their insights as to why such a balanced risk allocation will contribute significantly to a positive project outcome in contracts for underground works. 

Bernard is partner in Pinsent Masons in Pinsent Masons Construction and Advisory Disputes Group. He is a construction lawyer specialising in large infrastructure projects. 

He has 28 years post qualification experience in the field of construction law, having previously worked in Singapore and Australia, before relocating to HK in 1998. 

He has particular experience with the FIDIC suite of contracts, and is a regular speaker at FIDIC conferences. He has been recognised as a leading construction lawyer in Who's Who Legal since 2015, and is ranked "preeminent" by Doyles 2020 list of Leading HK Front-End Construction & Infrastructure Lawyers.

Zita is a specialist transactional lawyer in Pinsent Masons Construction and Advisory Disputes Group, based in Hong Kong.

She is regularly involved in drafting and negotiating EPC, design build and operate (DBO) and related contracts in Hong Kong and internationally, in the energy, transport and infrastructure sectors. Zita regularly advises clients on project and contract structuring and administration, and subcontract management, based on the FIDIC standard forms of contract, and NEC3 and NEC4 target cost contracts.