DAUB is a registered non-profit restricted association with up to 30 individual members; in details up to 10 from owners, up to 10 from scientific institutions and consultants, and up to 10 from contractors and machine producers. The members are personally elected for a period of 3 years. Re-election is possible as long as a member is not retired or is no longer involved in tunnelling business.
22 DAUB members took part in the annual traditional D-A-CH-meeting 2011 involving Germany (D), Austria (A) and Switzerland (CH). This year’s host was Germany. The meeting took place in Fulda and was attended also by 13 Austrian and 6 Swiss colleagues. The ½ day technical seminar dealt with tunnel maintenance and renewal.
Main topics were technical and organisational items of renewal of road and rail tunnels. Especially several railway tunnels in Europe are more than 100 years old and thus have reached their nominal service life time. Furthermore the newest developments of refurbishment using tunnel boring and enlargement machines were shown. Finally the status of road tunnel retrofitting in Germany was explained. The additional technical tour led to the “old” Schluechtern tunnel which is currently under refurbishment while the trains run through the new parallel tunnel.
Established for many years as the «tunnellers' get-together» and held in high esteem in expert circles the STUVA Conference held at the Berlin Fairgrounds from December 6 till 8, 2011, which attracted more than 1,400 participants, was a great success.
In his opening address the STUVA board chairman, Prof. Martin Ziegler, dealt with the need to develop the infrastructure in order to also ensure a prosperous society in future. This must be accomplished in a sustainable and environmentally-friendly fashion in order to maintain a balance. The Conference's motto was thus «Underground Construction for Sustainable Environmental and Climate Protection».
Ziegler pointed out that increasingly major projects are difficult to accomplish nowadays given strong resistance from sections of the public. He advocated that the need for underground links must be brought home to the population. A step in this direction was provided in the keynote speech, dealing with the issue whether people were onlookers, opponents or participants when it came to improving the acceptance of major projects by the general public
DAUB run 6 working groups during 2010:
- Financing of tunnels via PPP/BOT-projects
- Recommendations for designing prefabricated tunnel lining segments
- Recommendations for contracts with low potential for conflicts
- Requirements for protective and emergency cabins on underground worksites (update)
- External communication of DAUB