On 14 April, Karin de Haas, director of COB, gave a presentation at the ITA COSUF congress in Tromsø, Norway. This international forum brings together tunnel professionals from across Europe to exchange knowledge and experiences on tunnel safety, management and maintenance.
In her presentation, Karin showed how COB, as the Dutch-Flemish knowledge network for underground construction, connects people, knowledge and practice. From that role, COB is also helping to build European collaboration. An important starting point is the Declaration of Dublin, which COB translated into a concrete knowledge programme under the name Time to maintain tunnels. This programme brings together current themes such as tunnel safety, asset management, data-driven working, smart maintenance and renovation, and climate adaptation.
Karin also highlighted the next step in this collaboration: on 24 and 25 June 2026, COB will organise a two-day workshop in Delft, where European tunnel owners and experts will come together to discuss the major challenges of today and tomorrow. How do we keep tunnels safe, available, and affordable? How do we attract and retain well-trained professionals? And how do we tackle the maintenance and renovation challenge in a smart and collaborative way? These questions will be at the heart of the invited sessions in Delft.
Registration for this two-day workshop is already open via the COB website. The event will take place in Delft on 24 June 2026 from 09:30 until 25 June 2026 at 17:00, and COB explicitly invites participants from across Europe to share tools, best practices, and insights.
Karin’s presentation in Tromsø once again shows what COB stands for: bringing people together, sharing knowledge and working jointly on future-proof tunnels. By connecting experiences from different countries, new knowledge emerges that can be directly applied in practice.
More information and registration for the workshop in Delft can be found on the COB website.
