Geotechnical News • September 2015
19
GEOTECHNICAL INSTRUMENTATION NEWS
Tradition, pomp and the Webb-Ellis trophy.
acquisition and management. We also
plan to invite selected registrants to
make brief presentations about case
histories and lessons learned. For
updates, see
-
toring.com.
After the 2015 course we had an excit-
ing field trip to the Poggio Baldi land-
slide (
),
where ten companies made demonstra-
tions of their equipment. We’re explor-
ing the possibility of another field trip
combined with the 2016 course.
Rugby, tradition and pomp
The rugby world cup will be played
here in England during September
and October
.
com
). Yes, USA will be competing,
but not Canada. New Zealand are the
cup-holders - how many of you have
watched the fabulous haka, a tradi-
tional ancestral war cry of the Māori
people of New Zealand, which the
national rugby team performs before
international matches? If not, watch
the beginning of the 2011 final on
youtube. Search for “best haka ever”.
What a great way to establish fear in
the minds of opponents!
As I write this, the cup trophy is on
a tour of UK. Last week it was in
Dartmoor National Park, where I live.
So, being a rabid fan, I went to see,
and as it turned
out, also to
touch. It arrived
on a display
table in the back
of a Landrover!
I didn’t know
anything about
the formalities
of the event, and
I learned that
the location was
selected for a
formal handover
from the juris-
diction of one
mayor to another,
hence the tradi-
tion and pomp.
In the photo,
from the right:
Mayor of Plymouth;
Mayor of Exeter (love the regalia!);
flunky with mace (who is obligated
to accompany the mayor of Exeter on
formal occasions – love the mace, the
hat and the sunglasses – no sun was
visible!); Chairman of local district
council; no idea (but someone said
that he was a security guard, respon-
sible for preventing me from stealing
the trophy).
As a very Americanized Englishman
(having lived across the pond for 30
years), I found all this fascinating
and amusing. How about having a
ceremony like this, or a haka, at the
beginning of the World Series?
Closure
Please send an abstract of an article
for GIN to
co.uk
—see the guidelines on www.
geotechnicalnews.com/instrumenta-
tion_news.php
Gan bei! (dry the cup). China.
Lessons learned during removal of instrumentation after
13 years of monitoring at a large urban tunnelling project
David K Cook and Thijs Claus
Background
In Amsterdam, one of Europe’s big-
gest settlement monitoring contracts,
the monitoring of the Noord/Zuidlijn
(North/Southline) Metro line, has
ended. Installation commenced in
2000 and removal completed in 2013.
Following completion of 3.8 km of
twin-bore metro tunnels, three large
cut and cover stations and construction
under the historic Amsterdam Central
Station, project-related settlement and
consequent risks had passed. After a
period of close-out monitoring, the
instrumentation was decommissioned
and removed. Figure 1 shows a typical
robotic total station for monitoring any
deformation of buildings during tun-
nelling beneath the roadway.
Third parties
Although most third-party stakehold-
ers understood that the ongoing risk
of settlement was low and that the
financial cost of keeping an automated
network of robotic total stations (RTS)
and associated prisms was large, there
