Engineering is one of the oldest disciplines that has been and is the driving force behind technological progress. The creativity and foresight of our ancestors - engineering innovators helped us to create the transport infrastructure, which forms the cornerstone to this day as basis for its constant and smooth development and modernization. On the one hand, we would be grateful that we inherited a railway and road network with structures such as bridges and tunnels, which still serve today, but on the other hand we face challenges to not only modernize but gradually replace this network to meet the long-term transport demands and guarantee its sustainability also for future generations.

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We have learned from the past and we are constantly confirming that engineering has a crucial role to play in technical innovation and TIAG evidently cannot leave aside this opportunity. Our intention here is to provide a broad platform for the exchange of information in the field of engineering dealing with modes of transport as a system as well as individual components, especially for railway and road infrastructure, but also looking at intermodal aspects.

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For the railway mode we would like to cover all issues of system approach in interaction of infrastructure with traffic demands, technology and development of high speed but also classical network to serve mixed or freight traffic and finally also requirements for structural components like rails, sleeper, subgrade, unconventional design, etc.

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For road mode we are far more modest because we are still lacking some expertise but we would like to explore the potential for innovative solutions adaptable both for rail and road mode such as use of materials,  waste deployment, geotechnics and environmental issues as noise and vibrations,  in particular in urban traffic. The other issue is BIM – Building Information Modelling as principles and methodology are certainly applicable across of all transport infrastructure processes starting from design, planning, construction and maintenance taking into account operational requirements.

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The focus will be on the structure – bridges and tunnels as here we can benefit from the synergies and experience of both modes – rail and road.  There many challenges in front of engineering in this area again starting from rehabilitation strategies of old structures by strengthening, reinforcement, improvement and preservation techniques, and ending by innovative design employing new materials and technologies in constructing, implementing, practicing and monitoring of transportation structural facilities.

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In principle TIAG should serve as platform for exchange and sharing information and thus as creative knowledge base to learn from what is available and not to spent unnecessary resources for their projects/daily practice.  Taking into account the available expertise and know-how of TIAG partners we would be pleased to provide some practical advice and references free of charge but would be also in position to perform short term clearly targeted studies on the request of potential clients for marginal costs and expenses.