Mega Builders

S05:E01 - Bosphorus Tunnel

As Mega Builders cameras roll, Taisei, the Japanese construction giant, the lead contractor, smoothly assembles the centrepiece of the seventy-seven kilometre long mega project: an immersed tunnel under the Bosphorus, the fabled waterway that splits Istanbul in two and separates Europe from Asia. Tunnel construction manager Yukio Hanada even sets a world record lowering one of the last of the eleven tunnel segments, each longer than a football field that form the tunnel. At a depth of 60 metres, it breaks the previous record for the world’s deepest immersed tunnel by 18 metres.