PEIGIE  LEE

With all the QS lecturer of Taylor's University, 10 students from Semester 1, including me, had the opportunity to visit the tunnel site. The site visit to MRT tunnel site in Cochrane really indeed opened my eyes to real construction field. Thanks to Mr Derrick, the civil engineer on duty who gave us a fruitful talk and explanations as well as his pearl of advice to the students based on his rule of thumb. I was thrilled by how the tunneling machine functions, notwithstanding we do not have the chance to see the machine as it had passed to another station, which is Pasar Seni Station.  The RM8.2billion tunnelling package for KVMRT SBK Line involves the design and construction of 9.5km of MRT underground tunnel with seven underground stations. MGKT won the contract through a competitive bid. The underground tunnelling alignment runs from the Semantan North Portal near the Federal Hill past the urban transport hub of KL Sentral and the busy streets of Bukit Bintang and Chinatown to the Maluri South Portal near Taman Miharja. The entire 51km MRT SBK Line is expected to be fully operational by mid-2017. 

 

Also, according to a QS on duty, Mr Khor Tek Khoo, who is assigned to architecture of the station, the most important matter of tunnel station which is currently concerned is the event of fire in tunnel and how people is going to escape from tunnel during fire.  

 

At the end of the site visit, the students had the opportunity to have a brief chat with Mr. Derrick from Gamuda. He is a graduate from Germany. He highly encourages us to study abroad, especially in Germany, if we have the chance by trying to apply various kind of scholarship. The education there is different from Malaysia as it opens our mind requiring us to be creative and innovative, to think out of the box but not merely restricted to the lecture notes and syallabus. Not to mention, he urged us to come back and work for our country disregard the money offered by foreign countries. We have to gather the brains in Malaysia and work for better community, better country. Such an inspiring pearl of advice. 

 

It was indeed a fruitful site visit. We were not only exposed to the architecture of the stations, but also some of the engineering works especially the technology of tunnelling machine. Accumulating all these mini experiences during my study throughout the first semester has taught me so much.

 

Till then. Please watch the video below the nicely pictures the art of tunnel and how AMAZING the machine works. I swear it's gonna be rad!