RECOMMENDATIONS ON HOW GEOTECHNICAL BASELINE REPORTS CAN BE PREPARED FOR ROCK TUNNEL PROJECTS

摘要

The issues associated with using Geotechnical Baseline Reports on tunneling projects have been the subject of extensive debate for several years. This paper attempts to summarize these issues and it presents research to show that despite the ongoing debate, there appears to have been limited changes or improvements made to address these problems over the last 5 to 10 years. The paper then provides recommendations to help mitigate some of the issues identified, which include recommending changes to what baselines should be used and how they should be presented. In particular it recommends only developing baselines that directly address specific aspects of ground behavior and/or other possible claims, as opposed to simply providing baselines for individual rock properties, which are often inconsistent, open to misinterpretation or have no direct relevance to a potential claim.