According to a paper published in 2007 in the AGH annual "Wiertnictwo, Nafta, Gaz" (Drilling, Oil, Gas), the first directional crossing in Poland was drilled in 1991. It carried a steel gas pipeline under the Vistula near Włocławek. In the second half of the 1990s horizontal directional drilling (HDD) became a specialism of its own in Poland, and contractors needed knowledge about designing directional boreholes and about how drilling fluid behaves. That knowledge existed at AGH's Faculty of Drilling and Oil, today the Faculty of Drilling, Oil and Gas (WWNiG). Two of its staff members, Rafał Wiśniowski and Jan Ziaja, began adapting it to the needs of the new industry.
Two drilling engineers
Prof. Rafał Wiśniowski (prof. dr hab. inż.) was born in Kraków in 1964. He graduated from the Faculty of Drilling and Oil in 1988 and earned his doctorate in 1992. His habilitation monograph, "Selected aspects of designing directional well structures using numerical techniques" (in Polish), was published in 2002, and the habilitation degree was conferred in 2003. He was Dean of WWNiG from 2016 to 2020 and has been AGH Vice-Rector for Cooperation since 2020 (terms 2020-2024 and 2024-2028).
Prof. Jan Ziaja (dr hab. inż., professor at AGH) was born in Kraków in 1965 and has worked at the faculty since 1990, starting as an assistant. He obtained his doctorate in 2000 and his habilitation in 2014, with a dissertation on drilling technologies used in horizontal directional drilling. In 2016 he took over as head of the Department of Drilling and Geoengineering, and he currently serves as WWNiG Vice-Dean for Research and Cooperation. According to his biography published by the NO-DIG POLAND organisers, he has worked on trenchless technologies since 1998 and has taught them to the faculty's students since 2002.
The NTTB quarterly
The main outlet for this work was the Kraków quarterly "NTTB. Nowoczesne Techniki i Technologie Bezwykopowe" (Modern Trenchless Techniques and Technologies, ISSN 1506-428X). The National Library of Poland catalogue records that it was published from 1998 to 2002 by HDD Consulting of Kraków, with Dr Marek Capik (1947-2025) of AGH's Department of Drilling and Geoengineering as editor-in-chief. Sixteen issues appeared. The original subtitle read "directional drilling, microtunnels, pipe jacking, network inspection"; from issue 2/1999 it became "directional drilling, microtunnelling, network inspection and rehabilitation". The catalogue lists the quarterly "TTB. Techniki i Technologie Bezwykopowe" (ISSN 1730-6450), published by the same company from 2003, as its continuation.
Jan Ziaja was technical editor of NTTB from 1998 to 2002 and a member of its programme board from 2000. He held the same roles at TTB until 2004. Rafał Wiśniowski published a series of articles in NTTB between 1999 and 2001. They covered directions in the modernisation of roller cone bits, matching bit types to the rock being drilled, modern diamond bit designs, the use of the Herschel-Bulkley model in drilling fluid hydraulics, and a method for determining the admissible drilling fluid flow rate in directional crossings. Ziaja wrote on the mechanics of rock drilling and on the properties of rocks and soils, and in 2001 on failures and drilling complications in HDD. Issue 2/2000 carried his paper with Robert Osikowicz on the development of horizontal directional drilling in Poland.
Selected works from the period (BaDAP, AGH bibliography; original Polish titles in translation):
| Year | Authors | Title | Published in |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1999 | R. Wiśniowski | Directions in the modernisation of roller cone bits | NTTB 1999 no. 1 |
| 1999 | J. Ziaja | Selected issues in the mechanics of rock drilling | NTTB 1999 no. 1 |
| 2000 | R. Wiśniowski | Application of the Herschel-Bulkley model in drilling fluid hydraulics | NTTB 2000 no. 2 |
| 2001 | R. Wiśniowski | A method for determining the admissible drilling fluid flow rate in horizontal directional crossings | NTTB 2001 no. 1 |
| 2001 | J. Ziaja | Drilling failures and complications in horizontal directional drilling (HDD) | NTTB 2001 no. 2-3 |
| 2001 | R. Wiśniowski, K. Skrzypaszek | Computer-aided determination of a fluid rheological model: the Flow-Fluid Coef program | NTTB 2001 no. 2-3 |
| 2002 | J. Ziaja | Supporting the choice of a trenchless gas pipeline rehabilitation method | NTTB 2002 no. 3 |
| 2003 | R. Wiśniowski | Directional boreholes: a proposed classification and basic terms | TTB 2003 no. 1 |
| 2004 | R. Wiśniowski, K. Skrzypaszek, M. Mrozik, P. Krupiński | A computer decision-support system for designing and executing horizontal directional crossings (HDD Designer) | Górnictwo i Geoinżynieria 28(4/2) |
Robert Osikowicz recalled that in the second half of the 1990s Warsaw had its own quarterly, "Technologie Bezwykopowe", alongside the Kraków-based NTTB. Paweł Kośmider, editor-in-chief of the quarterly "Inżynieria Bezwykopowa" (Trenchless Engineering), which has appeared since February 2003, had previously worked for several years at the publisher of NTTB. Mirosław Makuch of HDD Serwis summed up the continuity briefly: "first there was NTTB, then IB took over the baton".
Papers and conferences
Directional boreholes and HDD came up repeatedly in their papers at the faculty conference "New methods and technologies in petroleum geology, drilling, well production and gas engineering". It was an oil and drilling conference in which directional crossings were one thread among many. At its 10th edition in Kraków (24-25 June 1999) they presented, together with Marek Capik, a paper on designing directional well structures. A year later, on 29-30 June 2000, Ziaja, Wiśniowski, Capik and E. Lis discussed the development of directional crossings in Poland. In 2003, at the 14th edition in Zakopane, Wiśniowski and Ziaja spoke about collisions of directional borehole trajectories. From 2002 to 2008 Jan Ziaja was the scientific secretary of this conference.
They presented the same subject abroad. At the conference in Podbanské, Slovakia, organised by the Technical University of Košice, they gave the paper "Horizontal directional drilling development in Poland" in 1999 (with Marek Capik), followed in 2002 by "Analysis of horizontal directional drilling development in Poland". At home they also spoke at conferences on underground infrastructure and water supply. In April 2003, at a Kielce University of Technology conference in Kielce-Cedzyna, Wiśniowski, S. Stryczek and Ziaja discussed selected aspects of designing and executing HDD crossings.
The LIMBUR statuettes
The same period saw an award of which few traces remain online. LIMBUR statuettes were awarded to trenchless companies in several categories. For 2002, the Company of the Year statuette went to INFRA. The citation, quoted in the English-language NO-DIG 2004 special edition of "Inżynieria Bezwykopowa", recognised "the sum of technical/technological and organisational/logistic undertakings which made it possible to promote a company specialised in trenchless network renovation". PeBeKa S.A. received LIMBUR 2002 in the Project of the Year 2002, Renovation category for relining a DN 800 steel sludge pipeline leading to the Żelazny Most reservoir with PEHD 710x40.2 SDR 17.6 pipe. HEADS states that its bentonite products for drilling fluids won the TYTAN and LIMBUR statuettes in the Product of the Year category.
According to people who took part in those events, LIMBUR grew out of the circle around the NTTB quarterly, and its categories included an award for the longest HDD crossing. By the same accounts, AGH staff took part in selecting the winners. A separate award, the TYTAN statuette, has been presented since 2003 by the publisher of "Inżynieria Bezwykopowa".
What grew out of it
From 2002 trenchless subjects also reached scientific journals. Between 2002 and 2009 the annual "Wiertnictwo, Nafta, Gaz" carried a series of papers by the two authors and their co-workers on gas pipeline rehabilitation, technologies and drilling tools for directional crossings, the selection of drilling rigs, the design of large-diameter crossings and the ballasting of pipe strings during pull-back. In 2004, in "Acta Montanistica Slovaca", they described methods for determining the admissible bending radius of an HDD drill string. The same line of work produced computer programs for crossing design, among them HDD Designer (2004) and HORIZON (2007).
In 2007 the faculty ran a postgraduate programme in modern trenchless techniques and technologies. It continues today as "Modern technologies of trenchless pipeline construction", headed by Prof. Jan Ziaja. The faculty also organises the "Technologie Bezwykopowe" (Trenchless Technologies) conference. Its second edition took place on 26 March 2026, and the next is scheduled for 25 March 2027.
