DOHA: The Qatar Railways Company (Qatar Rail) said yesterday it had re-launched its Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) at the Corniche station of Doha Metro’s Red Line, damaged by flooding in the tunnel in mid-February.
The TBM has been re-launched after three months of rehabilitation efforts, Qatar Rail said.
Repair, split into cleaning, rewiring and re-installation phases, covered replacement of damaged equipment and about 80 percent of the machinery was changed. Repair was done at speed, meaning the initial timeline to complete the Red Line and Doha Metro were unaffected.
Assisted by service providers, Qatar Rail and the contractor contained the damage incurred on the TBM by pumping out water.
Qatar Rail said there were no injuries or environmental impact following the incident. Tunnelling works, initially five months ahead of schedule, are keeping with the timetable after spending three months on rehabilitation.
“We had put in place strict risk mitigation and emergency control strategies and processes before we initiated tunnelling works for Doha Metro. We are aware that such a complex tunnelling project is prone to incidents of this sort and our processes identify the most likely risks and plan for them. We are proud of the team who handled the incident at Corniche station,” said Engineer Saad Ahmed Al Muhannadi, CEO, Qatar Rail.
“Thanks to prompt reaction, rehabilitation took three months while comparable events usually need six months to one year and a half to reach recovery. Tunnelling incidents are complex, however we were able to deal with it with efficiency and swiftness.”
Qatar Rail said it had completed 30km of tunnels, a strong progress from just under 20km it last reported in April. When complete, Doha Metro will have 113km of tunnels. Qatar Rail received 21 TBMs for the project, after their import from Herrenknecht, the German world market leader in mechanised tunnelling technology. Qatar Rail TBMs are operational, with expectations to accomplish the tunnelling phase by the second quarter of 2017.
The Peninsula
