Ten years of progress at tunnelbuilder.com1st April, 1999. The Internet bubble had popped, first generation dot.com companies had gone bust, and magazines were looking sick. Recession was the name of the game, and nowhere more so than in publishing, where advertisement revenues hit rock bottom. So we launched tunnelbuilder.com, a website with a great idea for high-quality news and low-cost advertisements, but with no readers and no advertisers. The banks did not think it a great idea, so we used our own finance. And that is the way it stayed. The rest is history. We set up a design company and a sales company. We talked the icons of the tunnelling industry into sponsoring us through our first year, and they have been with us ever since. By late 2000 we broke even, and started to expand our services, having achieved the status of flagship website for the tunnelling industry.We then set up www.tunnelconsultants.com and www.tunneljournalists.com to garner the support of real specialists. We followed with our language sites, first www.tunnelbuilder.es in Spanish, and then www.tunnelbuilder.it in Italian, all of the time increasing our readership. Along the way, www.tunnelintelligence.com was launched, with an emphasis on safety and health.Fast forward to 1st April, 2009. Banks are afraid of each other, and even more afraid of their customers. Lending has dried up, causing another recession. However, governments around the world are bringing forward infrastructure projects, and this is helping an already resilient tunnelling industry. The rate at which tenders are being announced has increased, requiring tunnelbuilder.com to update daily, with an avid readership of well over 1,000/day. Add 500 Spanish and 250 Italian speakers, and 250 for our support websites, and we are talking 2,000+ readers/day! That's every day of the year, including weekends and holidays! RSS feed is now de rigeur for readers, and advertisers need to track visitor numbers, both facilities now available at tunnelbuilder.com.Because of our origins, we see recession as an opportunity for small companies like ours. We can flex daily to new demands, whereas larger competitors find instant decisions more difficult. We are also better placed to react quickly to the needs of our 75 key clients, often loading their breaking news within the hour.Our strength, as with all companies large and small, is in our people and their dedication. We are also fortunate to have the support and inputs of some of the most respected names in the business, people whose word we trust and whose judgement is sound. Very necessary ingredients if we are to publish accurate, timeous information to a competent and discerning audience!Where will we be on 1st April, 2019? 14/09.