The creation of Crossrail and the opening of the Elizabeth line has been a herculean task
over many, many, years at least 20 years in this current incarnation. It's been built by
the people of our amazing supply chain: Tier One contractors, Tier Two contractors, suppliers.
more than two-thirds of the whole of Crossrail has come from sources outside of London. 75,000 people
have worked on Crossrail and many of them have never actually been to the infrastructure here in
London, a huge huge effort by everybody and most importantly I think, 60 to 70 per cent has been
provided and built by small to medium enterprises. At the end of the day building Crossrail and
opening Elizabeth line has all been about people and the spirit of endeavour and commitment. All
that's left to say is thank you, thank you to all the amazing people who contributed over many,
many years to build Crossrail and of course open the incredible Elizabeth line.
Laing O'Rourke played a huge part in the construction of the Elizabeth line,
from the early days we're involved in some of the enabling contracts,
the enabling works at Farrington station, building a station box at Canary Wharf
and then more recently Laing O'Rourke have built three of the nine new stations at Custom House,
Tottenham Court Road and at Liverpool Street and it's been a huge privilege to work on the program.
We provided 23,000 pieces of GRC which is glass fibre reinforced concrete
they were manufactured by GRC UK, a Laing O'Rourke company in Nottinghamshire
and each of those pieces combined to give what I would say is a signature effect for Crossrail,
it's the swept curves that uniquely identify the concourses and the platforms on Crossrail.
I was lucky enough to be involved in all of Costains projects right across the Elizabeth line
so from delivering stations to the system-wide contracts and then looking after the program
overall. There wasn't an easy day to come to work but probably one of the biggest technical
challenges was when I was working at Paddington station and we excavated to the bottom of the
box and we found a problem with the piles and it was a phenomenon that had rarely been seen
in the UK or even around the world and at the time it was it was almost felt like an
insurmountable problem but it was a really good example of where the supply chain coming together
with the Crossrail engineering team could actually sort of put their intellect together and actually
come up with a solution that was workable for everyone and a really practical way forward.
Originally I worked as an estate agent I worked in property and then I moved
into construction because I was interested in watching things go from inception to completion.
Working on the Elizabeth line at the time meant to me a career, experience both at the same time
with a really good qualification. Now what it means to me is being able to tell my children
that I was a part of that, and for that i'm really grateful.
I joined Crossrail at the really early stages of my career as a graduate civil engineer
and I gained just the most broad experiences throughout the next seven years, so really
half of my career was spent working on the Elizabeth line. We were sinking shafts in
tiny locations right in the centre of London and that really caused us some logistical challenges.
We really overcame that by talking to the local community, working with our suppliers
to make sure that we were delivering that in the most sustainable and efficient way. When I
look back and I think of some of the locations we were working in that I think that is a huge
achievement we managed to do that without causing disruption to the local community.
I think our legacy is what we've done around young talent. Construction is still a people
business we're very keen to drive at home in Ferrovial you know we've been a big
push on apprenticeships and obviously, BFK is no exception I think we had over
60 apprenticeships on this program we had a large number of graduates
the local community and I think that for me is probably the nicest legacy that we've left.
I was responsible for the strategic planning of the Systemwide contract in the routeway
which included the track, overhead line, cabling among many others. The materials we installed as
part of the system-wide contract came from far and wide within the UK. The steel for the long
welded rails was manufactured in Scunthorpe, the cross-passage panels were manufactured
and delivered from Norfolk and our specialist cable pulling contractor travel all the way
down from Ripon in North Yorkshire to install the kilometres of cables along the routeway.
On a project as large and complex as the Elizabeth line it's vitally important that all parties
collaborate with each, other for example us as a system-wide contractor we're able to deliver and
collect materials for the stations, shafts and portals using the works trains in the tunnels.
Our company was responsible for the design, installation and commissioning
of the platform screen door system that can be found within the central section
from Paddington all the way through to Woolwich. During the project we
faced many issues that we had to overcome such as how to design and install on curved platforms
whilst ensuring the gaps between the train and the platform screen doors were kept to a minimum.
Also each of the 16 platforms required over 200 metres of floor-to-ceiling structure,
glass panels and covers that had to be installed extremely accurately to ensure the train could
pass safely within the tunnels but also fit seamlessly within the station infrastructure.
We were approached by Crossrail back in 2015 and there were two specific
fixtures that they wanted us to consider developing and manufacturing for them,
first one is Icon which sits atop of the totems that is a 60,000 lumen light output fixture,
the other product that we developed was the Plinth and that sits between the escalators.
There are other major infrastructure projects which we're now getting slowly involved with
because of the expertise we proved in this and it's allowed us to employ more people in
our research and product development division so for us Crossrail has had a major impact.
Booth Industries supplied over 700 high-performance steel door sets
across the Crossrail network. Our doors can be found at
platform level, such as the ones to my left, in the tunnels portals shafts and the head houses.
Booth Industries have been involved on the Crossrail project for over six years,
during that time it's led to stable employment for people in the Bolton and surrounding areas,
it's also led to the creation of new jobs and apprenticeships. Being a key supply chain
partner on the project has allowed us to go on to win further work in the infrastructure sector.
We had to design the stations to last for 120 years and the basic structure is all
reinforced concrete and engineers like us are very confident that reinforced concrete will
indeed last for 120 years but there are things in the stations that have to be maintained
and replaced, for example these huge panels behind me, if one of these has to be replaced
at any point during 120 years if you tilt it in the right direction it will actually fit
through the gap in the screen doors and it's able to be taken out or brought back by train.
Siemens Mobility delivered the digital signalling and both the central and station management
technologies for the Elizabeth line. From a signalling perspective, it's important that the
mass transit system that we supply interfaced correctly with the main line either side of
the central section. Our system linked up with 30,000 or so connections in the central section
alone, all of these systems were brought together virtually before going onto the railway.
Alstom's role in the Elizabeth line comprised three significant elements,
the train itself where it was designed and built in Derby, the depot which is
a state-of-the-art facility built from scratch in Old Oak Common where we'll be supporting the
maintenance of the trains over the next 32 years and also as part of the ATC Consortium
Alstom delivered the fit-out of the tools including overhead line, power and track design.
Hawkins Brown have been working for Crossrail and now Elizabeth line for over 30 years. I
think our role is to look at how these wonderful underground spaces hit the ground and what impact
that's going to be on the city and the people who come here to work and live in the city.
I think when we're looking at design of stations is we've got to think about
robust materials that're going to last a long time and we're looking for efficiency so for example
the light fittings we've designed to include sound systems and acoustic properties, so this has been
an amazing journey an amazing collaboration with lots of different people along the way.
It was such an exciting thing to be working on a construction site in the middle of Europe's
busiest shopping street. I cannot wait to see people coming and trying out the new railway,
riding the new trains being amazed at the size of the stations and in the future I
hope my children's children's children will be riding the railway and saying to each other
great-grandma Lih-Ling helped build this railway and Tottenham Court Road station is her station.
So we've installed lots of really complex systems that will need to be maintained,
supported for years, even potentially for decades so the supply chain
will continue to play a really really big part in making the Elizabeth line the success it is
obviously I feel a real sense of pride in being part of a team that's brought
the Elizabeth line to where it is today living breathing to life for our customers.