An effort a century before to build a rail tunnel through the St. Gotthard massif was treacherous. That construction between 1872 and 1882 was plagued by bad rock and flooding. It killed 310 workers, incapacitated 877 others and bankrupted the contractor. The more recent highway tunnel was less disastrous, but not without major challenges. Although designed to curve around the worst rock, unexpected conditions delayed its construction, more than doubled its original cost and killed 19 workers.

The tunnel links Gšschenen in the north with Airolo, Italy, to the south. It is 10.2 miles long, 25 ft wide and 15 ft high. A safety tunnel 10.5 ft high and 7.5 ft wide parallels at a distance of 100 ft. Drivers can now travel from Hamburg, Germany, to Reggio di Calabria in southern Italy without ever leaving the motorway, saving 19 miles of twisting St. Gotthard Pass, which is closed up to six months a year because of weather.

Tunnel construction was handled by two joint venture contractors, one working from the north and the other from the south (ENR 2/7/80 p. 26). Work began simultaneously in 1969 on both ends of the vehicular and safety tunnels and on four ventilation shafts.

Most of the tunnel alignment was through competent granite, granite-gneiss and schist, but there were surprises from the start. On the safety tunnel, the contractor on the southern end ran into a 3,000-gal-per-minute flow of water that washed out workers. The northern contractor early on encountered rubble from the rail tunnel that took five months to dig through. That was followed by a 1,000-ft pocket of sand and talc.

On the south end, tremendous pressure heaved the floor up and took 2.5 years years to get through. Further along, a 2,300-ft stretch of rotten schist and badly laminated granite made it impossible to work a full face. Miners had to install rock bolts, arch steel and liner plates. Two 10-hour shifts averaged only 9 ft per day.

The tunnel's two vertical shafts were drilled and blasted, with muck removed by clamshell bucket. The two others, which incline at 45¡, were bored in two stages. First, a 10-ft-dia mole bored up from the highway tunnel, hanging on with hydraulic feet. Next, a 22-ft-dia machine drove down the shaft. Ventilation plants supply air at 76,000 cu ft per sec. The air moves across the tunnel, not longitudinally, so that an area can be isolated in the event of an accident.

Synthetic Fiel Causes Construction Stir
The synthetic fuels industry, in what was hoped to generate a construction boom and a revival among ailing industries, created a new energy and enthusiasm. For engineering companies suffering from slackened orders of nuclear power projects, designing the coal-conversion plants meant more jobs on significant projects, and profits. Union and nonunion contractors and their workers would find more jobs. Though getting new production started was hindered by state permitting processes and environmental issues, "the legislative push" given by Washington revved the synfuels industry. For one ambitious project, a New Jersey-based engineering company had a contract with five gas companies that planned to build the $1.3-billion Great Plains coal gasification plant in North Dakota (ENR 3/6/80 p. 30).

Reagan Wins Presidency
Design and construction professions were delighted over President Reagan's election and a pro-business Congress that would suppress government control, cut taxes, and "let the market work." Despite action by major banks that raised their prime rate to 15 1/2% and a precipitous drop by the stock market on the same day that a "quickie" tax cut was endorsed, construction leaders were convinced that interest rates would stabilize and go down by cutting the costs of government without cutting services. Furthermore, Reagan's plans for the first 100 days in office sought to increase energy production, remove environmental rules and bolster defense by building more missile silos (ENR 11/13/80 p. 12).

Building Unity in a Hurry
In the heat of the Negev Desert, U.S. design-construct forces strove to complete two new Israeli air bases, one of the cornerstones of the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. The U.S. was in a time bind to replicate the 6,000-acre tactical air bases that the Israelis built on captured Sinai territory after the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Completion was driven by a timetable negotiated between Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who demanded clear title to the Sinai peninsula three years after the historic peace treaty was ratified in 1979. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers moved quickly and signed two design-construct teams, one for each base, to ensure Israel's defense perimeter wasn't left open when its air force abandoned the Sinai bases. (ENR 10/30/80 p. 26).