Book excerpt: 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 106 papers presented at the 2021 conference. Though the tunneling industry continues to develop both technically and contractually, one notable adaptation of the last two years has been the onset and management of COVID-19. The hallmarks of tunneling professionals include adaptability, resiliency, optimism, and management of change. These are traits that have been recently put to an entirely new challenge over the last year or so. We have truly witnessed why what we do is deemed “essential” infrastructure. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted each of us, personally and professionally, and while times have been hard, we are fortunate to work in a field that is able to meet the challenge and thrive thereafter. Congratulations are in order to everyone in our industry for keeping the planning and development of projects moving forward and for maintaining safe and productive worksites in these challenging times.