L&T Lowers TBM Lavi into Bangalore Metro’s Shivajinagar Station

Back in mid-June, workers from Larsen & Toubro quietly lowered pieces of their fourth and final Tunnel Boring Machine – DZ672 nicknamed Lavi – into the Shivajinagar Station for building tunnels on the 21.386 km Line-4 (Reach 6 / Pink Line) of the 73.92 km Bangalore Metro Phase 2 project.

This Ø6.65m slurry machine was manufactured at China Railway Construction Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. (CRCHI)’s plant in Changsha, China and passed factory acceptance tests in December 2019. It arrived in Bengaluru city through the Chennai Port in March along with TBM DZ671 (Vindhya).

Per the tunneling plan, TBM Lavi along with TBM Avni, lowered earlier in May, will be deployed exclusively for building the 2.755 km package RT-02’s 2141 meter twin tunnels between Shivaji Nagar – MG Road – National Military School (formerly Vellara Road).

Lavi’s Tail Skin (see graphic) was lowered on Tuesday and workers are now preparing to cast the station’s head-wall, next to its diaphragm wall, after which the machines will be pulled ahead.

Larsen & Toubro officials in early June reported delays to me with the delivery of key equipment due to the COVID-19 related lockdown, such as the 6 multi-service vehicles (MSVs) L&T bought to support tunneling.

Per Radhakrishna Reddy – BMRCL’s Director of Projects, with whom S Lalita at The New Indian Express spoke with, excavation can also not begin without CRCHI’s tunneling experts due to warranty conditions.

Giving instructions via video conference is not possible, Reddy said, as engineers need to physically operate the machine for 1 kilometre and check it out as there is a warranty on the machines

For more updates, check out the Bangalore section of The Metro Rail Guy!

– TMRG