General Assemblies

2016 General Assembly

Forty-second Annual Meeting – SAN FRANCISCO 2016

The International Tunnelling and Underground Space Association held its forty-second meeting in San Francisco, from 22 to 28 April 2016, in conjunction with the World Tunnel Congress 2016 "Uniting the Indi-ustry" organized by ITA and the the UCA of SME.  More than 2300 persons participated in the Congress. 59 of the 73 Member Nations participated or were represented in the General Assembly.

MEMBER NATIONS PRESENT OR REPRESENTED

South Africa, Germany,  Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bhutan,  Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Republic of Korea,  Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, United Arab Emirates,  Spain, United States of America, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iceland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lesotho, Mexico, Montenegro, Nepal, Norway, The Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, United Kingdom, Russia, Serbia, Singapore, Slovenia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine.

MEMBER NATIONS NOT PRESENT

Algeria,  Saudi Arabia, Bolivia, Cambodia,Costa-Rica,Ecuador, Kazakhstan, Lao PDR,  Macedonia (FYROM), Malaysia, Morocco,  Myanmar, Panama, Peru, Venezuela, Vietnam.

EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

MEMBERS

Tarcisio B. Celestino, President, Brazil (2016-2019)
Søren Degn Eskesen, Past President, Denmark (2016-2019)
Alexandre Gomes, Vice-President, Chile (2016-2019)
Ruth Gunlaug Haug, Vice-President, Norway (2016-2019)
Eric Leca, Vice-President, France (2016-2019)
Jinxiu (Jenny) Yan, Vice-President, China (2016-2019)
Anna Sieminska Lewandowska, Poland (2014-2017)
Davorin Kolic, Croatia, (2016-2019)
Giuseppe Lunardi, Italy, (2016-2019)
Chungsik Yoo, Korea, (2016-2019)
Felix Amberg, Treasurer, Switzerland (2016-2019)
Salma AlMaamari, UAE  (2015-2018)

MEMBERSHIP AND DECISIONS

The Association elected Prof Tarcisio Celestino as its XXth President for the term 2016-2019.  
Vietnam was represented by ITST. ITST agreed to a change of representative and the new one is VIETNAMESE TUNNELLING ASSOCIATION.
The Association has registered 11 new AffiliateMembers (6 Corporate Members and 5 Individual Members); the total results to 73 Member Nations and 271 Affiliate Members (184 Corporate Members and 87 Individual) Members) taking into account some resignations. PORR joined the category of prime sponsor on April 2016 (Total: 17). 3 new companies became Supporters: Arcelomittal (Luxembourg), Forta Corp (USA) and Kordsa Global (Turkey) (total: 57). 

OPEN SESSION

The Open Session, which took place on April 24th, was dedicated on ““Industry Advances”

Session Co-Chairs: Randall Essex and Priscilla Nelson

WG2 Research – Chungsik Yoo

•        Risk Management – Current Practices
•        In-Situ Measurements for High Stress Conditions and Pressurized Conveyances
•        Fibre Reinforcement of Precast Concrete Segments

WG3 Contractual Practices – Arnold Dix

•        Past contracting practices that have not worked and why – global questionnaire
•        ITA/FIDIC collaboration: new FIDIC contract clauses for subsurface construction

WG20 – Urban Problems and Underground Solutions – Wout Broere

•        Political and commercial challenges of developing underground space in urban areas

Lessons learned from past and ongoing projects 
Watch the video of the Open session - part 1 - part 2


 

NEXT ANNUAL MEETINGS

  • Bergen, Norway, from June 9 to 16, 2017, during the ITA-AITES WTC 2017 “Surface problems – Underground solutions"
  • Dubaï, UAE, from April 20 to 26 2018, during the ITA-AITES WTC 2018 "Smart Cities: Managing the use of underground space to enhance quality of life"
  • Naples, Italy, from 2 to 9 May, 2019, during the ITA-AITES WTC 2019 “Tunnels and underground cities: engineering and innovation meet archaeology, architecture and art”.

 

 

SUMMARY OF REPORT OF ACTIVITY OF ITA – April 2015 to March 2016

 

 

EXECUTIVE COUNCIL

The Executive Council held 5 plenary meetings and carried out its traditional activities in taking into account the conclusions of the Auditor’s report, notably to take care of the relationship with the new Member Nations.

The Executive Council took actions to strengthen the relations with the new Member Nations, to develop the relationship with Sister Associations and to establish new relationship, to encourage the work of the Committees and to develop membership notably towards the industry through new Prime Sponsors and Supporters

STRATEGY

« ITA, the leading international organization promoting the use of tunnels and underground space through knowledge sharing and application of technology »

Seven strategic goals have been defined :

  • Goal #1: Consolidate/Activate Member Nations – particularly newly joined Member Nations
  • Goal #2: Improve Communication and Functioning of Working Groups and Committees
  • Goal #3: Expand Industry Relations
  • Goal #4: Encourage knowledge sharing through education and training
  • Goal #5: Create and develop an ITA Young Members Group
  • Goal #6: Promote the use of underground space
  • Goal #7: Improve communication towards Member Nations, industry and public

Over 85% of actions planned have reached the goal totally or partially. 

Task Forces :

This year different task forces worked on the following topics:

i.Member Nations – The task force is studying various actions to allow the Executive Council Members to be closer to the Member Nations, to facilitate actions and implementation of ITA mission in the different countries. Notably encouraging Regional forum.

ii. Industry Relations - to better take into account relationship between ITA and the industry at large but mainly the companies Affiliate, Supporters and Prime Sponsor.

iii. Communication - Several articles and interviews have been published on ITA along the year. The total impacts of these articles is over 500.They are available on the ITA webpage. The task force is studying means to improve the communication towards the general public and within the industry.

iv. ITA Awards - After four years of cooperating with the New Civil Engineer in the United Kingdom for the first time ITA organized its own awards on November 21st 2015. It has been quite a success both in terms of numbers and geographical representation as we had 110 entries for all categories coming from all around the world ITA More information is available on the dedicated website : awards.ita-aites.org

v. WTCs -to better take into account the lessons learned from the different WTCs. During the year the task force collected the remarks given after the WTCs in the past 5 years. The goal is to prepare for the WTCs organizers major topics to deal with and provide advice and requirements

RELATIONS WITH THE MEMBER NATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE CONTACTS

Visiting 20 Member Nations. Endorsing 22 events organised by Member Nations. Representing ITA at Regional and local conferences, seminars and workshops organised by Member Nations. Organising training courses through ITACET Foundation.

Several meetings of Member nations belo,ging to the same part of the world have taken all over the year and during the WTC, notably the Latin American Forum, the Nordic Forum and the East European Countries Forum.

The contacts with the International Sister Associations PIARC, ISRM, IAEG, FIDIC, ISSMGE, ITIG, ISOCARP and IRF were pursued.

WORKING GROUPS AND COMMITTEES

The 13 active Working Groups met regularly during WTC and for some of them in between during the year. The production of guidelines and recommendations is increasing and shows good work done by all participants.

All the groups met in San Francisco on Sunday 24 and Monday 25 April under the chairmanship of their Animateurs or their Vice Animateurs.

  3 WG reports have been published this year, they are available on ITA web page.:

•      WG 2 – “Twenty years of FRC tunnel segments practice: lessons learnt and proposed design principles”
•      WG 11  - “Owners Guide to Immersed Tunnels –V3”
•     WG 14 / 19 – “Recommendations on the development of underground projects with respect to the tunnelling methods”

The ITA four Committees ITA COSUF, ITA-CET, itacus and ITAtech are very active. Two guidelines have been published this year. More information is available on the web page of each committee. During the year, itacus has continued its work with its global partners notably with the publication in cooperation with ISCARP of the case studies "Think deep: planning, development and use of underground space in cities". During the year itacus organised 2 #u2fc - urban underground future conversation to better address issues such as climate change, participate at the Climate Summit in NY UN headquarter. 

During WTC, both ITACUS and ITAtech organized specific sessions notably on “'Think Deep' Open Session: Towards a new urban underground space agenda » and « The Impact of Digitalization and Connectivity on the Tunnelling Industry » respectively.

At the initiative of the Young members Group, a special session on BIM in tunnelling has been organized.

The ITA YM group elected, Sindre Log (Norway) and Lasse Vester (Denmark) as new Chair and Vice Chair. A new issue of the magazine breakthrough has been published. 

Before the WTC, the ITA-CET in cooperation with UCA of SME and ITACET Foundation organized 2 training sessions on “monitoring and Control in tunnelling” and on “Underground Space use”  

DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRIME SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS

Since 1st April 2015, GEO-DATA-CONSULT GROUP and PORR joined the category of "Prime Sponsors". Existing Primes Sponsors are (in alphabetic order): ATLAS COPCO, BASF, BEKAERT MACCAFERRI, CRCHI, GEO-DATA-CONSULT, HERRENKNECHT, IMPLENIA, MAPEI, NORMET, PORR, RIO TINTO-COPPER, ROBBINS, SANDVIK, SBGR& D, SELI, SIKA, STC and ZOOMLION.. 

RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED NATIONS AND OTHER INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS

In 2014, the relationships with the United Nations and specifically with UN-ISDR and UN Habitat have been strengthened with the participation of ITA members in the Urban Planning Group of UN. ITA is now partner of the resilient cities campaign.ITA and itacus are participating in a joint activity group on Underground Freight, on urban underground resilience.  

ITA Awards

The ITA Tunnelling Awards will identify and celebrate outstanding achievements in tunnelling and underground space development and promote international recognition of the industry’s remarkable contributions to engineering and to society.

 

Based on the success the ExCo decided to go ahead with a second edition which has already been launched. The conference and the diner will take place in Singapore on November 11th 2016. This year the event will be associated with a technical conference organized by TUCSS (Singapore MN) on the day before (November 10th).

A contest for 9 categories – Encourage owners, designers, contractors, manufacturers. The deadline to submit new entries has been extended to mid-June 2016. The submission requirements and selection process are stated in the ITA Tunnelling Awards website (https://awards.ita-aites.org/). The finalists will be announced by mid-July 2016.

For further details regarding the ITA Awards, please click on the following link:

https://awards.ita-aites.org/ and follow us on twitter @ItaAwardhttps://awards.ita-aites.org/

 

PUBLICATIONS AND COMMUNICATION

  • ita@news: 4 issues of the ita@news have been published this year and distributed to about 8’000 subscribers. ITA would like very much to have feedback of regular readers. In addition,  specific @news have been issued for the awards and for WTC.

  • Internal bulletin :3 Internal bulletins have been sent out since the GA in Dubrovnik (one after each ExCO meeting). The purpose of the bulletin is to improve communications by informing about the activities of the Executive Council. ExCo encourage the Member Nations to disseminate the internal news to their national members.

  • Website: The visits on the ITA corporate web site have increased by +31% since last year We have #7,000 sessions per month from 5,500 users (+35%) from more than 150 countries  This year a Russian version of the web site dedicated to general public has been released. 
  • ITA – Reports: 5 reports have been published, three from ITA Working Groups (2,11 and 14/19) and two from ITAtech Activity Groups:
    • WG2 : Twenty years of FRC tunnel segments practice: lessons learnt and proposed design principles

    • WG11: Owners Guide to Immersed Tunnels

    • WG14/19: Recommendations on the development of underground projects with respect to the tunnelling methods

    • Guidance for precast fibre reinforced concrete segments – volume 1: design aspects

    • Vibration Control in Urban Drill & Blast Tunnelling

All these documents are available free of charge on ITA website and available for comments. 

  • Press: In 2015-2016, ITA directly or indirectly participated in articles published in technical journals or current affairs programmes. During the year the following press releases have been sent out all over the world (data base of 35 000 media): 9 Press releases for the ITA Awards, 2 Press releases for WTC 2015 and a Press Kit given to the 15 journalists in Dubrovnik, 1 Press release and 1 Press Kit for the Press Conference (with 12 journalists) on COP 21,1 press release on Young Engineers, 2 press releases for the 2016 ITA awards, 2 press releases for WTC 2016.
  • Video: Several videos have been uploaded on the ITA Youtube channel, notably several ones that have been produced for the awards. At the occasion of the awards, a video on the“Tunnelling works over the year 2015” has been produced and shown in Hagerbach. On the Youtube channel, it has been seen more than 3,500 times
  • Social networks: the ITA group in the social network LinkedIn is very active. There are nearly 3,000 members in this group.

  • Twitter :A twitter account has been set up for the Awards; @itaaward