As 2023 nears and the underground infrastructure industry eyes emerging opportunities for the new year, registration has officially opened for the Underground Construction Technology Conference & Exhibition (UCT) – the leading educational and exhibition event to provide essential intelligence, information and business leads. c

(UC) — The Trenchless Technology Center (TTC) at Louisiana Tech University is in the midst of the most active research year of its existence and its Industry Advisory Board (IAB), again, hit an all-time high in 2022. The TTC has recovered from the lull of the global pandemic in all aspects except in-person training, which is expected to bounce back this fall.

BRH Garver recently completed two segments of major sanitary sewer system improvements in Houston, employing microtunneling. The bores consisted of 4,600 linear feet and 4,200 linear feet of 60-inch-diameter gravity sewer tunnel at depths to 70 feet. Hazen and Sawyer designed both projects for the owner, the city of Houston.

Last winter, in bitterly cold temperatures and snowy conditions, Ellingson Contracting Inc. (ECI) completed a difficult, 4,075-foot-long horizontal directional drill (HDD) intersect crossing of a swampy area in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, to install 30-inch diameter steel pipe.

While never a simple market, the past two years have seen the complexity of horizontal directional drilling (HDD) reach new levels, due to both anticipated and unexpected problems.