Designing underground utility infrastructure in congested urban areas is accompanied by many challenges, such as working around extremely high levels of existing utilities, subsurface transportation infrastructure, elevation changes, expressways, rivers and railroads.
HBK has successfully engineered and designed tunnel solutions for many large infrastructure projects, from hand-excavated and mined box tunnels to reinforced concrete pipe and steel casings installed via tunnel boring machines. HBK provides turn-key services including:
- Soil Borings / Soil Evaluation
- Structural Calculations
- Grout Designs
- Shaft Designs
- Tunnel Alignment Design
- Tunnel Lining Design
- Tunnel Inspections
- Tunnel Appetences Design ( platforms, utility supports, ladders)
- Conduit / Pipe Bore Spacer Designs
From river crossings to railroad crossings to bridge abutments and expressways, HBK’s designs have seamlessly transitioned from surface trench to tunnel and back, taking many factors into consideration, starting always with safety and damage prevention and including soil conditions, surface conditions, existing infrastructure vibration monitoring, conduit, pipe and cable limitations, thermal characteristics, ampacity calculations, shaft construction space limitations (horizontal and vertical, alignment), construction logistics and impact to surroundings.
Our engineers and designers have designed both casings and hand-mined box tunnels for power HPFF pipe and dry cable conduit, water main and telecommunications infrastructure as well as have vast experience working in and designing modifications for existing tunnel infrastructure.