Crossrail is Europe's largest infrastructure project. It's right that we recognize the
fact that we're now halfway through this programme, on budget, on time, and delivering it at a
world class standard.
Crossrail will add 10% more capacity to London public transport in the next 5 years. It's
absolutely essential that that capacity is created to maintain London as a global city.
Particularly going into Canary Wharf. We're going to increase the capacity into Canary
Wharf by 50%. They're going to be bigger stations, lighter stations, I tell you, I can't wait
to see the finished infrastructure.
We've actually built more than half the tunnels. All of our construction sites are pretty much
at their busiest, and we're well on the way to creating the space that will allow us to
build the railway that will be Crossrail.
It's really important on a program so large that we recognize these key milestones. We've
completed more than 30km of bored tunnel, 3.5km of spray concrete lining tunnel, we've
moved 1.5 million cubic metres of spoil to Wallasea. And whilst we appreciate the inherent
risks of a program of this size and scale, we continue to make safety our number one
value in everything that we do.
Doing that amount of construction in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world,
there's all sorts of challenges.
The Olympics were happening and the world's largest sporting party going on. We've been
building Europe's largest construction project underneath the people in London, and really
without anybody noticing what we were doing.
It's hugely complex, will be a signal to the rest of the world we have a confidence they
should feel envious of.
You know there's hardly a week in Crossrail that goes by without hitting another major
milestone. I suppose some of those that stick out for me; the Connaught tunnel works under
the Royal Victoria docks was very complicated, completing the large caverns at Stepney Green
were perhaps some of the most technically difficult and complex spray concrete lining
works. When a Tunnel Boring Machine breaks out into one of these stations it's always
very impressive, it's always very demonstrable that work has been done well, at a world class
standard, and safely.
When we started Crossrail we had an ambition to deliver more than just a world class railway.
What we need to do is to leave a legacy, and for me that's two things. One is to stimulate
local business growth by putting money into the supply chains; three out of five of all
our contracts go outside London and the South East.
There are 75,000 business opportunities, predominantly for small and medium companies to work with
Crossrail. This is an optimistic view of what life can be like if we prioritise investment
in the infrastructure. It creates jobs, it creates a future, it creates optimism.
The second thing we had to do is to uplift skills right across the industry by employing
people; at the moment we have 10,000, by looking after young people without jobs.
We have over 300 apprentices now working on Crossrail as part of our commitment, it's
all part of creating a better capability in the workforce for other projects that come
along after Crossrail.
What I wanted to say today is just to celebrate the fact that here I think we're seeing a
really big part of the industrial future of Britain.
We put a lot of effort into understanding how we can get the vast majority of the material
we take out away from London without congesting the streets.
So what we've done wherever we can, and that's over 80%, we actually remove the excavated
material and then we take it up on the river on ships, and we're building a bird sanctuary
up at Wallasea Island, which is out in the Thames estuary.
We also spend a lot of time talking to local communities about what we're doing and trying
to create opportunities where we can contribute, whether it's through helping with reading
and learning, whether it's about local events in terms of charity raising, we're trying
very hard to make sure that people do understand that we are very appreciative of the support
they give us and to feed back to people what we're doing.
So as we look now to the second half, the character of Crossrail as an organization
will change. Away from heavy civils, structures and tunneling and on towards creating the
station space. Fitting out the railway, testing the commission, linking in with the Great
West line on the west, and the Anglian in the North East.
When you come down here you just release what a huge undertaking Crossrail is. You can start
to see what Crossrail will look like in the year 2018.
We've built really good relationships with London Underground, with Network Rail, with
DLR, and that's set ups up really well to take us through what is going to be an even
more challenging last 50% for this project.
What we are doing today sends the most incredibly powerful message around the world of what
British construction and engineering can achieve if they have the confidence and support of
government.
I'm very confident after the performance we have so far, that we understand the risks
of the second half and will deliver Crossrail safely, on budget, on time in 2018.