Crossrail Central Section consisted of 2x tunnels of 21 km each and an open route section of 3 km across London, connecting nine new stations from Royal Oak Portal to Abbey Wood and a North East spur towards Stratford. Our team was part Systemwide delivery of trace works, Electrification (OLE), Mechanical and Electrical Services.
The Challenges
- Logistics: One single Railhead located on the East side of the project feeding the tunnel with engineering trains which had to come back at the end of every shift for loading and maintenance, complicating the delivery of plant and materials and causing breakdowns to have a massive effect in all activities.
- Interfaces: Multiple contractors involved in the delivery of the different systems within the tunnel in addition to all stations which need to be interconnected with the trace.
- Programme set to meet milestones for the different systems, concentrating in one at the time that, combined with the difficult logistics, complicated the integrated delivery of multiple systems at the same time.
- Constant design changes and procurement issues.
- Lack of traceability
Our Solution
A clear direction. Each system needs to be fully understood from a delivery point of view to be able to react to unexpected changes. In the complex environment of Crossrail were constant changes are inevitable, we were able to look at the integration of all systems and the delivery as a whole.
Our team was able to deal with a big amount of processed information. Once information was carefully analysed and constant communication maintained with all teams, we managed to react effectively and improve the outputs of the most critical disciplines.
Outputs:
- Long term delivery programme for OLE, Mechanical and Electrical Construction and Testing & Commissioning works.
- 2x Week Lookahead programmes and Daily planning of works.
- Management of engineering trains, proposing and implementing required modifications to improve productivity.
- Accurate trackers to capture the status of the installation and remaining snags.
- High level dashboards to report the progress and programme.
Key Outcomes
- Reliability: our information was accurate and reliable, leading to an effective use of working time.
- Clear Direction: even if we had to react to changes on a daily basis, we lead teams to clear long-term goals.
- Energy: constantly encouraging people. We take delivery personally and transmit our passion to the teams.
- Building trust due to our performance and attitude.
Final Thoughts
A team needs to play by the rules of the game, otherwise they will eventually be disqualified. Understanding the “nature of the beast” is essential, but even great professionals sometimes forget this. Teams need to spend time looking at the big picture to clearly focus their actions towards the important goals.
