When driving through our countryside, in particular at the coast or in mountain regions, the eye meets civil engineering construction masterpieces. Retaining walls along cuts into the mountain to give way for the street, cleared out slopes as remains of the roads construction, slides due to the careless preparation of modern societies pathways. Do we like that? Maybe a lot of us are prepared to understand these disturbances of nature as one asset of modern society and overlook them. A growing number of people is no longer willing to accept them and is increasingly opposing new road constructions.

Do we take pride in spoiling a great landscape? Certainly not! But then, can we think of ways, allowing a mobile society at minimal environmental impact? We are lucky enough to offer technology, which may help to build environmentally friendly modern society pathways, for example. It is the IBO-Titan self drilling hollow bar system. We are momentarily supplying this system for the construction of retaining walls along the highway 92 between San Mateo and Half Moon Bay in California, which have to blend into the environment. The picture shows a finished section. Could almost be mistaken for natural rock!

The IBO-Titan system consists of comparatively short hollow steel rods with an outside thread and fitting accessories like couplers and drill bits. The earth reinforcement members are drilled directly and cement grout can be injected at the same time. The couplers allow the addition of rod elements until the required anchor or soil nail length is reached. Boring and grouting simultaneously bears the advantage of soil stabilization in the process. It is therefore a  particularly great system, when bad soil conditions, like weathered and broken rock or gravel is met. No need for cased in boring, heavy equipment and long rock or soil anchors and the corresponding obstruction of large areas around the job site.

The figure illustrates this. The IBO-Titan soil nail system reduces the required clearance for a road construction significantly. Slopes up to 60 degrees can be constructed as "green walls" and can be stabilized by geo-textile mesh without the need for shotcrete. Other environment friendly solutions can be realized with IBO-Titan soil nails as embankment stabilization and the stabilization and renovation of land slides. There is probably even more, which we haven’t thought about and we are open to suggestions and questions.

Our answer to the question raised in the title is, that construction and environment might not get married, but they may become closer!