For more than a year, SWS Engineering has been working on the assessment of Italian motorways tunnels, which include a heritage of about 300 km of tunnels built between 1960 and 2015. The activity consists in the observation, analysis and classification of the deteriorations that appear on the tunnel final lining.
SWS, in partnership with Lombardi Ingegneria and Rocksoil S.p.A., has developed the guidelines, together with the Ministero delle Infrastrutture e della Mobilità Sostenibile. The classification of defects, according to the IQOA System, has now become a Manual of the Ministero delle Infrastrutture e della Mobilità Sostenibile. The Manual concerns tunnel inspections of all the highway concessionaires.
SWS addressed issues related to controlled demolition of existing coatings and the reconstruction according to the most modern technologies available in the tunneling field. The company, with its technicians, has made possible the execution of these works by providing professionalism with twenty years of experience in the field of geo-engineering.
The experience gained by SWS in the maintenance of tunnels will lead to the digitization of inspections, with the creation of specific databases that will contain information about defects and maintenance measures of interventions focused on the structural restoration of the coating.