A tunnel-boring machine that was damaged because of flooding on the Doha Metro is up and running after three months of repairs, and the project remains on track.
Qatar Rail, the company overseeing the construction of the country’s railway network, said the machine was operating at the Corniche station on the Red Line when a gate closure mechanism failed, causing water to flood into the machine and damaging the equipment. The flood did not cause any injuries or environmental damage, it added.
Gerhard Cordes, the Red Line project manager for Qatar Rail, said: “We reacted immediately to the incident by discharging water through pumping. Dewatering wells were installed and surface dewatering commenced in early March.”
Mr Cordes said that the company then started an “intense repair period”, with more than 80 per cent of the machine’s parts replaced and the remainder cleaned and repaired, before work started earlier this month.
Saad Al Muhannadi, the chief executive of Qatar Rail, said that such repairs usually take between six and 18 months to complete, but that its prompt action meant the project remains on track, as it was running five months ahead of schedule.
“We are very aware that such a complex tunnelling project is prone to incidents of this sort [and] we are proud of the team who handled the incident.”
To date, more than 30 kilometres of tunnels on the Doha Metro have been completed – up from 20km in April. In total, the first phase will have 113km of tunnels.
Qatar Rail has 21 tunnel-boring machines in use for construction of the Doha Metro. It expects the tunnelling aspects of the project to complete by the second quarter of 2017.
Overall project completion for phase one is expected by October 2019.
mfahy@thenational.ae
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