Principles and basis of underground projects and project management processes

Tunneling activites have an increasing rate in Turkey especially in the last decade. A lot of new company, new projects and plans have rised with day by day. The biggest part of the tunneling activities have owned by the General Directorate of Highways according to Turkish vision about logistical support and transportation Current study related to the most important part of tunneling activities: Project Planning. Engineering companies which hold up the weight of the increasing tunneling sector activities have need an efficient project management system in order to achieve clear, correct and transparent tunneling projects. Effective project management system give a real advantage to engineering companies to decide strategical level. This research investigate more than 50 tunnel project in last two years collabaration with innovative project management systems to identify the efficient project management system for tunneling projects and their processes. For this purpose, literature survey has been made for tunneling process improvement firstly. Then, organization scheme has been created for the tunneling department in an engineering company, identifed the processes and drawn process map with RACI matrix. Cause and effect analysis has been made for identifying the revision reasons of the tunneling project in more than 50 projects and 500 revisions on them. Support systems have been analysed for the standartization process. A tunnel engineer has to decide support system in weak formation because the weak formation has wide range variation in support systems. Stakeholder meetings set for identifying expectations and problems in tunnel projects and only common ground for a tunnel project is just safety. All project processes have been elaborated and a lot of forms and templates have been created for process standartization of processes. Managing a project properly and entirely is possible when this project management system is applied. As a result, current study defines a systematical tunnel projection method by using project management systems.