Twenty-four years across Singapore's MRT lines, deep sewers and cable tunnels — plus utility drives in Qatar and heavy civil works in Bangladesh.
Zahirul Islam's twenty-four years underground cover the full breadth of Singapore's tunnel programme. Most recently he has driven CREG earth-pressure-balance machines on the Cross Island Line's CR111 contract and Herrenknecht EPBs on the Deep Tunnel Sewerage System's T08 — both under KSL Tunnelling. His first deep-sewer drives came far earlier, on DTSS T04 with a Mitsubishi machine under Samsung Corporation.
Between them sits most of the island's rail network. He ran CREG machines on the Thomson–East Coast Line's T311 under Yu Sin Engineering and a Kawasaki slurry TBM on the EW2 cable tunnel that carries Singapore's power network for SK E&C. On the Downtown Line — C919 under Sembawang Engineering, C925 under Sambo E&C and C927 under CMC Ravenna — he took Herrenknecht and Robbins machines through Bukit Timah granite and its punishing mixed-face transition zones. Earlier still came the Circle Line: C852 with Herrenknecht machines under Who Hup, and C854 on a Kawasaki slurry platform under Taisei Corporation.
His experience reaches beyond Singapore and beyond tunnels: a compact 3.5-metre Herrenknecht micro-tunnelling machine on Qatar's DTSS, working for Herrenknecht itself, and heavy civil works back home in Bangladesh — road works, river bank protective works and building construction — proof that Zen Tunnel Engineering's capabilities extend to general civil and industrial works.
