Chase Juhl on Tunnel Construction Challenges
Constructing deep tunnels beneath Houston required overcoming challenging soils, groundwater, and precise underground navigation. Chase Juhl, Program Construction Manager, explains how the Surface Water Supply Project team successfully completed one of the program’s most technically demanding tunneling efforts while keeping the project on track.
Transcript
Transcript edited for clarity and readability.
Some of the biggest challenges we’ve faced on the Surface Water Supply Project have really been related to soils and groundwater. When you’re constructing tunnels 55 feet deep with an immense amount of water pressure in sandy soils, you’re obviously going to run into challenges.
Getting the shafts constructed in some of those difficult soil conditions has been a real challenge.
Segment B3 is a good example. It included a 4.4-mile tunnel, 128 inches in diameter, with a 96-inch water line installed inside.
We had to construct seven shaft sites. After excavating the first shaft about 50 feet deep, we launched the tunnel boring machine.
We weren’t going to see it again for almost a mile, at shaft number two. The machine had to follow the planned curve and arrive at exactly the right location so we could continue to the next shaft, then repeat that process through shafts three, four, five, six, and finally seven.
The complexity was all underground, but that project went really well for the program.
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