On Sunday 22nd January, Dr. Sauer & Partners' Bethan Haig and Petr Salak joined other industry experts in delivering a programme as part of a student mentoring initiative. The programme devised, promoted and delivered by ROWGA saw over 65 students from Nigeria attend the online session, organised by founder Abidemi Agwor.
In their session, Bethan, Petr and Jacobs' Sandeep Singh Nirmal discussed the benefits and challenges of tunnelling in cities. The importance of underground space and its smart use is a topic that as an industry we have long been aware of, and also how our development of it can help create cities of the future that are more sustainable and resilient.
The week 3 mentoring session's topic covered tunnelling and underground interventions around the world, and the impact on the socio-economic outcome of these cities.
The students that joined the call are final year university students and recent graduates who are currently in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC). They are collaborating as part of the ROWGA initiative in a competition that requires them to explore solutions to problems associated with urbanisation in cities through tunnelling and underground space development. Each team is expected to identify challenges and problems associated with urban space in their city (university location) such as transportation, water supply, pollution, refuse disposal etc., and subsequently devise sustainable solutions utilising tunnelling and underground space development, this is then presented in a technical research paper.
Read more about the ROWGA programme.
