The Group met twice during WTC 2014. Only seven people from six countries - Brazil, Finland, Germany, India, Norway and UK - attended either one or both meetings. This wa a particularly poor attendance for WG 5.
The poor attendance has meant the level of scrutiny of the documents reviewed was not as great as I would have wanted and could result in a delay of one year in our work programme.
ITA Report No 14 “Guidelines for the provision of refuge chambers in tunnels under construction” has been published for WTC 2014.
The first major item of work was the revision of ITA Report 10, “Guidelines for good working practice in High Pressure Compressed Air” done jointly with BTS CAWG. WG5 completed its review of the document on Monday afternoon. Timescale to completion requires review of the document by BTS CAWG in May 2014; Peer review by ExCo and final sign off of the document by WG5 and CAWG in November 2014. Publication is planned by WTC 2015.
The second major item of work this year was the drafting of our Guideline on “Safety requirements for vehicles used in tunnelling”. Our timescale for this work is 90% completion and initial peer review before WTC 2015; final review by WG5 at WTC 2015 with publication at WTC 2016.
WG5 noted with concern the absence of H&S from the ITA training course immediately prior to the WTC. WG5 also noted the lack of H&S in recent or forthcoming training courses of a general tunnelling nature run by ITACET. Some courses would be in countries which probably do not have a history of good H&S regulation. WG5 requests ExCo to insist that H&S is included in relevant future training courses.
Because of the poor attendance, we decided to suspend our future work programme beyond completion of the work items currently being progressed.
The Executive Council noted the remark from the Animateur of WG5. The Executive Council is aware that H&S is of prime importance and therefore will ensure that this topic is included in the next training sessions.