Book excerpt: Share our experiences, our successes and failures, and our ideas and dreams, all with the goal of getting better at the work we love: building tunnels. Every two years, industry leaders and practitioners from around the world gather at the Rapid Excavation and Tunneling Conference (RETC), the authoritative program for the tunneling profession, to learn about the most recent advances and breakthroughs in this unique field. The information presented helps professionals keep pace with the ever-changing and growing tunneling industry. This book includes the full text of 111 papers presented at the 2019 conference covering such topics as contracting practices, design and planning, geotechnical considerations, hard-rock tunnel boring machines, new and innovative technologies, pressure-face TBM case histories, and tunneling for sustainability. The papers will inform, challenge, and stimulate each reader.