// INDUSTRY UNLOCKED
Jeremy Hammond , Co-founder , hyperTunnel
How has the business grown since it started and how have you ensured growth ?
It was a crazy vision . We had a good backing in terms of the technologies that we were going to employ because what we did was employ the technologies from multiple different industries , and we brought them into the tunnelling industry .
We had very good seed funding support from a highly capable and qualified engineer , successful businessman and leader of a family office . At the same time , we had two very large industrial supports – MBCC , the former construction chemicals division of the German chemicals giant BASF , and Network Rail . Network Rail has a large portfolio of over 650 tunnels so there ' s a lot of maintenance to be done . What our technology represents to Network Rail is the ability to solve a number of their challenges , such as maintaining the tunnel and enlarging it where that ' s necessary .
You have situations all over the country where they aren ' t able to electrify simply because the tunnel isn ' t large enough to carry the electrification infrastructure and the train .
For example , along the west coast of Wales , they ’ re still using diesel trains as many tunnels need enlarging and the technology available today to enlarge the tunnels without shutting them is extremely limited . But hyperTunnel represents an opportunity for them .
How is your technology revolutionising the construction industry ?
Fundamentally , the concept is we build the tunnel and then dig the hole , not the other way round – that ' s pretty revolutionary . However , more revolutionary is our belief that the default for underground structure creation , by the end of this decade , will be the use of swarming robots .
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