Close Decision in the Exciting “Young Forum” Lecture Competition

Fabian Rauch is the winner of the “Young Forum” presentation competition at the STUVA Conference 2023. The winner of the Young Forum received the winner‘s certificate from Prof. Martin Ziegler for his presentation on “New insights into the real load-bearing behaviour of a reinforced concrete segment tunnel”. Fabian Rauch‘s impressive presentation centred on the in-situ structural monitoring method used for the U5 extension in Frankfurt, which can measure the forces acting in a segment both during various construction stages and in the final state. As usual, the decision on the winner of the young talent competition was in the hands of the conference participants present. They were able to vote on which entry they liked best from the competing young talents. For the first time, the votes were cast electronically, allowing the jury to follow the close race right up to the end of the voting, just like in a voting studio. The decision was literally made in the last few minutes, as the other competitors in the presentation competition also won many votes. In the end, however, Fabian Rauch prevailed against the competition and was not only able to enjoy the honour, but also a trip to the largest motorway construction project in the history of Virginia (USA), the “Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel Expansion”.

Further participants, whose presentations were also well received by the audience, were: Andre Lauterbach, M. Sc., WTM Engineers: “Fehmarnbelt Tunnel – Examination of a major cross-border project”; Judith Berns, M. Sc., RUB Bochum: “Concept for optimising the construction site equipment for a mechanised tunnel drive in an inner-city area using process simulation”; Anna Diehl, M. Sc, BUNG Ingenieure: “Development of a resilience management concept for transport infrastructures to deal with natural and climate change-related hazards” and Nils Schluckebier, M. Sc., Schüßler-Plan: “BIM-Ready – the path from the BIM pilot project to fully comprehensive model-based planning for the U5 underground line in the centre of Hamburg”. STUVA would like to thank all participants in the competition for their fantastic commitment!