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The Expanding Role of Trenchless Technology

in Underground Construction
Raymond L. Sterling, Ph.D., P.E.
Professor and Director,Trenchless Technology Center
Louisiana Tech University, P.O. Box 10348, Ruston, LA 71272-0046, USA
<sterling@coes.latech.edu>

Abstract
This paper summarizes the types of changes in underground construction and repair expected in the coming decades and
how trenchless technologies can be further developed and integrated into the planning, design and management of
underground facilities. The historically erratic advances in underground construction technology are reviewed and
compared to the rapid current developments in trenchless techniques. Future application opportunities and problems are
identified both within the underground utility system arena and as special techniques within a broad variety of
underground works.
Keywords: Trenchless technology, underground construction, underground space use.

Introduction
The increase in the level of activity in underground works around the world is almost certain to continue. This increase
is being driven by underlying societal decisions about the surface environment, the past neglect of what has already been
placed underground, and future needs and opportunities for new underground facilities and services. The growth may
slow or reverse during recessions and vary from city to city or country to country but the underlying trends are robust
and very unlikely to change. Likewise, trenchless technologies will play a more and more important role in the overall
array of underground construction techniques. They offer radically improved methods of remotely installing, assessing
and repairing underground structures that would have been almost unthinkable 30 years ago.

Historical Perspective and Future Innovation

Underground technologies have not developed continuously. For several thousands of years, excavation was carried out
with crude hand tools and hard rocks were fractured by fire or by wetting wooden wedges to expand them in holes or
cracks in the rock. The use of gunpowder for rock excavation introduced a revolution in the technology of rock
excavation and in the types of projects that could be accomplished. Similarly, open-cut excavation practices and soft-
ground tunneling practices were radically changed by development of the steam shovel and by the invention of the tunnel
shield. In recent decades, the rapid development of hard-rock tunneling boring machines and the invention of slurry and
earth-pressure balance machines have allowed major cost reductions and increased in safety for tunnel works. These
changes in excavation technology did not occur continuously. The major changes occurred in relatively short spaces of
time followed by long periods of refinement of the techniques.
In the history of drilling technology, one can see similar steps in technology development – hand drills giving way to
compressed air drills and these to hydraulic drills, each improvement giving step changes in performance. The materials
in the drill bits have also had a major impact – tempered steel bits giving way to embedded tungsten carbide and diamond
cutting surfaces with these to be replaced by current developments in composite materials. The development of the ability
to steer drills effectively below ground did not change the rate of drilling but it did have a major impact on how
effectively drilled holes could meet their purpose, e.g. for collecting oil.
In these brief examples, we see two kinds of innovation – application of inventions or developments outside the area of
technology to a given problem (e.g., gunpowder and material science) and invention of a new technique for carrying out
the needed work (e.g., shield tunnels and directional drilling). Both have the capability to make radical changes in
practice over time.
In relation to trenchless technology, for example, the major advances so far have come from inventiveness in terms of
technique – creating a method of doing the work that did not exist before. Many of these advances may be termed “field-
driven” innovations – solutions developed to solve pressing problems in real projects. These advances did not generally
come from a deep or improved theoretical understanding or improved materials. The concept was the key and any new
materials needed were adapted to support the envisioned technique. In fact, we have seen a remarkable number of new

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concepts in recent years – fueled by the difficulty, expense and disruption of previous methods and the incredible
potential for new methods of installing and repairing our underground infrastructure. The near future may bring
additional innovations of this caliber but even in the absence of major innovations in technique, there will be a period of
continued refinement of these still relatively new techniques. There are needs to improve the range of applicability of
techniques, to solve problems that retard the adoption of the techniques and to improve productivity in the use of the
techniques. Many of these refinements in trenchless and other underground technologies will be driven by better
theoretical understanding, better materials, and technology improvements outside the direct field of underground
engineering – in computer methods, in sensor development, in miniaturization, in artificial intelligence, and in materials
technology. Over time, the impact of these continued developments will be large but individual developments may be
less noticeable.
Trenchless technologies will also have to take their place as part of an overall system that is designed to provide utility
service to the public in a reliable, cost-effective and non-disruptive manner. Utility and public works managers will be
more likely to use trenchless technologies if they can be integrated easily into an overall asset management system and
if they carry a low risk of mishap. Trenchless technologies also have to fit the constraints of many civil infrastructure
systems – their physical size. For example, the extent of a sewer network and its pipe diameters are controlled by the
scale of the urban area and the function of the sewer network. This makes it difficult to use costly exotic materials that
can be very effective in small-scale applications but cannot be used cost-effectively in large volume applications.

The Role of Trenchless Technologies in the Utility Sector

Underground utility systems are the most common use of trenchless technologies and the need to improve and safeguard
the underground utility infrastructure is immense. The most prevalent technologies used today for utility installation,
management and repair are costly, very disruptive to the communities that they serve and poorly integrated. Our utility
infrastructure underpins the quality of life and the economic potential of our society but has been neglected over many
decades. The situation is similar in most countries throughout the world.
For example, in the United States, more than 3.5 million miles of underground utility services exist – involving water,
sewer, electric, gas, telephone, cable and other services to industry, businesses and homes. Across the world, a decade-
old estimate indicated that approximately 300,000 miles of underground utilities are installed annually with a market
value of over $35 billion. This estimate is almost certainly very low with the current installation of fiber optic cable
networks. Average design lives of underground utilities are 20 to 50 years but current actual annual spending on
maintaining and replacing these assets implies that they need to last hundreds to thousands of years.
This aging existing infrastructure and an increasing need to use the underground for new facilities combined with high
costs and substantial technical barriers provides the incentive for the continued research, development, and education
related to trenchless technologies discussed in the previous section.
In terms of market, it seems that trenchless technologies inevitably over time will enjoy an increasing market share of a
growing utility installation and repair market worldwide. This will provide great benefits to utility owners and members
of the trenchless industry and the pace of growth of this market is at least partially within their collective control. Factors
affecting growth in the use of trenchless technologies include public pressure to use trenchless techniques, the cost of
trenchless methods relative to alternate methods, and the confidence that public works engineers and utility managers
have in the techniques.
The future for trenchless technologies will be improved if:
• The trenchless industry continues to innovate and to provide quality products that will serve their function well.
• The ongoing research in many ancillary fields is used by the industry to increase performance and cost effectiveness.
• The owners of the systems are significantly involved – both in becoming educated about the techniques and in being
active participants in encouraging the development of techniques.
This shared role of manufacturers, suppliers, contractors, researchers, educators, consultants, owners and professional
and trade associations needs to be realized and their interactions nurtured. Owners will benefit in the long-term if they
encourage innovation instead of waiting to have its worth proved beyond all reasonable doubt. The industry will benefit
in the long-term if they develop the application standards and designs for each technique that will provide a successful
job and that specify the acceptable range of application conditions. Researchers and educators can assist both the industry
and the owners by adding knowledge about the behavior of systems, by developing improved technologies, and by

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educating the next generation of engineers. Associations provide the means for the sharing of technical information,
development of common standards, and the promotion of the potential benefits of trenchless technologies.

Future Opportunities
Opportunities to take advantage of trenchless techniques in system redesign are:
• Use of grinder pumps and pressure sewers that follow the ground surface contours and are installed by directional
drilling. In low density development, this lowers the capital cost of providing sewer services. It also allows sewers to
follow the same grade as other utilities – increasing the opportunities for common utility installations.
• Use of microtunneling and conventional tunneling to avoid or remove lift stations in sewer systems. Lift stations are
expensive maintenance and operational components of a sewer system. Using tunneling rather than open cut
excavation allows fewer lift stations to be used because the change in relationship of cost versus depth in tunneling
versus open cut.
• Use of utilidors (common utility tunnels). These have only been used to a great extent in the centers of major urban
areas. The development of HDD and microtunneling techniques may allow the use of non-person-entry utilidors
similar to duct banks but for the full range of underground services in a much wider range of urban development
conditions.

Future Problems
While the growth of trenchless technologies seems assured, there are a number or problems that will need to be addressed
and may limit its growth. In installation and replacement, these problems include:
• A combination of lack of knowledge of what is already installed underground in an area, difficulty in determining the
position of such installed plant, and poor tracking and steering in HDD operations can combine to cause damage to
existing systems. This damage can provide serious safety and economic implications for both the construction
company and affected parties.
• The potential for trenchless construction and replacement equipment to become stuck below ground – requiring an
expensive and disruptive emergency shaft for recovery.
• The potential for damaging earth movements due to unforeseen ground conditions and inability to monitor precisely
what is happening at the excavation face.
In rehabilitation, the major problems mainly relate to how to understand the long-term performance of the materials and
methods used for rehabilitation before they are widely used in practice.

The Role of Trenchless Technologies in Other Underground Works

As in the case of historical innovations, the capabilities of trenchless techniques not only allow current practices in utility
installation and repair to be done more cost effectively – they also create new opportunities for dealing with a wide range
of underground problems. There is a large array of facilities and infrastructure besides utility systems that is placed
underground and there is a vast amount of underground work that is carried out for purposes such as oil and gas recovery,
mining and environmental cleanup. For example:
• The recovery of oil and gas provided the incentive for the development of many of the techniques and tools that are
used today in horizontal directional drilling – particularly those related to rock drilling. It is likely, however, that the
broad range of utility applications will produce innovations that can be applied back to the oil and gas industry.
• Mining operations depend on the profitable removal and processing of minerals from the ground. This may involve
large open cut excavations or deep mining, caving, or leaching operations. The creation of access roadways, tunnels
and shafts and the temporary or permanent stability of underground chambers or soil/rock slopes are important issues
in most mining operations and cost issues are critical in terms of what can be mined and how profitable the mine will
be. Large mining operations can be optimized to a far greater extent than one-off civil underground projects and have
provided important advances in underground technologies that are used today in the civil sector. The flow of
technology has also been in the other direction with hard rock tunnel boring machines being increasingly used in the
mining industry for rapid development of access tunnels in deep mines.
• Environmental clean up and water resources provide another area of application for trenchless technologies that is
being exploited. Horizontal holes, in many cases, can provide far more effective operations than vertical holes for

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characterization of underground environmental problems, in-situ remediation techniques, monitoring wells, and the
production of water from thin aquifers.
• The construction of road, rail and metro tunnels is increasing. Urban road systems are turning to tunneled sections of
highways and streets to solve issues of neighborhood opposition, layout constraints and environmental preservation.
Urban rail and transit systems are being extended in many cities around the world to cope with increasing traffic
congestion on city streets with significant portions of this expansion work involving underground rail alignments and
underground stations. Intercity road and rail projects have and are continuing to be developed to cross major natural
barriers, e.g. the Channel Tunnel, and the Swiss alpine tunnels.
• There are many types of individual underground facilities ranging in size from small storage bunkers to massive
underground hydroelectric plants and they are built both in urban areas and in remote regions. They all involve issues
of access, supporting infrastructure, excavation methods and ground support.
The adaptation of advances in trenchless technologies to these other forms of underground works has considerable
potential. The main areas of interest are:
• Site Investigation. The ability to drill horizontally along the route of a tunnel and to be able to core rock encountered
can greatly reduce the uncertainty associated with major tunnel projects. This ability has been demonstrated by the
“Devico” system and will become more widely used in the future. Drilling without coring and the use of horizontal
cone penetrometers also will be used to supplement traditional geotechnical site investigations.
• Ground Improvement/Pre-support. The ability to install small pilot holes or tunnels in the vicinity of a larger
excavation and use them to ease the construction and support of the excavation is growing. The best known examples
are the use of microtunnels installed in a ring around the circumference of a large excavation that are filled with
concrete to provide a supporting ring before the main excavation commences. The use of directional drilling in
advance of rock excavations to provide efficient configurations of rock reinforcement and support, however, has not
seen much use to date although it could have significant potential.
• Soil and rock anchors. Drilled anchors are an important part of many excavation projects, slope stability
improvements, and cable supported structures. Directional drilling technology advances could allow more efficient
anchors configurations in some instances.

Integrated Research Approach for Utility Systems

To allow trenchless technologies to take their part in improving the entire system of installing, assessing and maintaining
underground utilities level will require advances in fundamental research and technology development.
Fundamental advances are required in:
• understanding of methods for reliably and accurately locating and defining barriers in the path of trenchless
operations;
• an improved understanding of underground corrosion processes and methods of designing materials that meet the
necessary cost, installation and life cycle performance criteria.
Technology improvements will lessen risk and lower costs during installation of new utilities through:
• computer-assisted route planning based on advanced methods of detecting existing underground structures and site
conditions and minimization of cost and risk;
• critical improvements in remote-controlled directional drilling and microtunneling to allow them to operate
accurately in a wide variety of site conditions and to monitor changing conditions during operation to optimize
performance and lower the risk of failure;
• efficient and semi-autonomous transmission of updated site and construction data to the permanent urban and utility
databases.
The systems will allow more effective asset management of underground utilities through:
• introduction of new materials and composites that meet the special requirements of trenchless operations as well as
having a long service life;
• development of low-cost sensor techniques utilizing micromanufacturing capabilities for monitoring performance and
deterioration of underground pipes and cables;
• critical improvements in trenchless methods of repairing and replacing underground utilities;

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• a multi-media-capable asset management system for integrating the site condition/existing structure database with
information on system performance and deterioration;
• the ability of the GIS and asset management systems to be able to incorporate measures uncertainty in geometric or
material property data and to be able manipulate and provide visualizations of this information.

Summary
There seems little doubt that this remarkable new set of tools for working remotely underground will continue to grow
in importance over the coming decades. Future engineers will understand trenchless technologies as well as they
currently understand conventional technologies. They will appreciate their benefits and their problems and will think of
them as the standard tools with which to install and maintain our underground utility systems. In addition, trenchless
techniques will have many applications to other types of underground works that are very poorly explored at present.