Crossrail and delivering the wow factor

 

Taking the baton from the Olympics, Crossrail is raising the bar for sustainability, health and safety and staff diversity. And if the scale of the engineering achievement isn’t enough, they’re also building it again in BIM and augmented reality. Elaine Knutt reports.

Crossrail is on such a jaw-dropping scale that it’s hard to think of it in the same terms Construction Manager normally uses to discuss construction projects. The challenges of programme, budget, contracts and materials all fade into mundanity when Crossrail is about mobilising a small army of 10,000 workers; creating an eerily beautiful subterranean city where once there was mud and rock; connecting it to the surface with sleek, functional, top-lit stations. It’s more sci-fi than structure, epic than everyday.

So it’s reassuring to find out that Crossrail staff can suffer the same difficulties in conceptualising such a huge and ambitious enterprise. “When people join the team, I always say they should give themselves six months to get their head around Crossrail,” says Rob Paris, Crossrail’s head of sustainability and consents. “It’s 100km from end to end and while you’ve got all the sexy stuff in the centre, the tunnels and shafts, there’s also fascinating stuff at places like Stockley – they recently installed a 1,000 tonne flyover there.”

But even if Crossrail sometimes seems to be a world in itself, it is firmly embedded in the construction industry’s own journey to better outcomes. “Andrew Wolstenholme [Crossrail chief executive] wants Crossrail to take the baton from the Olympics and become the next benchmark for the industry. They’re not only benchmarking against their own programme, but also putting something back into the wider industry,” comments Don Ward, chief executive of Constructing Excellence.

Client, contractors and consultants are using Crossrail’s sheer size to advance the industry on a number of agendas, from ethical sourcing to health and safety and particle emissions. With a £14.8bn budget, its spending power is sufficient to shift demand and counterbalance the argument that “one project can’t make a difference”. For instance, it is tackling areas of the sustainability agenda judged “too difficult” by the Olympic Delivery Authority, employing the kind of diverse workforce that other projects think of as aspirational, and devising a new approach to measuring health and safety that doesn’t rely on RIDDOR reporting hours.

“We were keen to build on the success of the Olympics, so their standard became our minimum and we moved the bar even higher for those bidding to be part of Crossrail,” comments health and safety director Steve Hails. “We’ve had more reporting, and more effort to build health and safety into the programme, as well as building on the ODA’s health agenda.”

Crossrail takes a “portfolio” approach to sustainability, which means it’s targeting economic, social and environmental goals and tracking quarterly progress on 16 different targets. Oversight comes from a high-powered sustainability committee chaired by chief executive Andrew Wolstenholme alongside programme director Andy Mitchell and other senior executives. Progress on the 16 initiatives, including skills training, job creation and energy reduction, is fed into a dashboard report which offers an “early warning” if progress has stalled. “It allows senior managers to make decisions on where to make more effort,” explains Paris.

Sustainability targets

Whereas the ODA set a globalised 50% carbon reduction target that encompassed the build process, materials usage and operations, Crossrail has set contractors a more specific target of reducing on-site energy usage by 8% compared to initial estimates. Paris concedes that the 8% figure was something of a stab in the dark, based on consultations with the main contractors during the procurement phase. “When I was casting around there was little or nothing in the industry to go on. They came back with a range of 4-10%, so we went for 8%.”

Measures adopted include using diesel-electric hybrid telehandlers and excavators, LED site lighting at Northfleet, Whitechapel, Bond Street and Paddington and even an experimental hydrogen fuel cell: because it runs silently, it’s used to power a 24-hour noise monitor at Pudding Mill Lane. “We’ve demonstrated to the industry it can be done, and the next generation of projects will take it up – but you’ve got to put demand up in the first place,” says Paris.

In 2013, the contractors achieved an average carbon reduction of 11%, while top performers reached 20%, outcomes which suggests the 4-10% range was under-ambitious. But given the lack of empirical data to base the original target on, perhaps the problem is that industry has paid more attention to BREEAM, Part L and energy in use than the carbon in its own backyard.

 

In terms of specifying material with recycled content, Crossrail is demanding 15% or a “stretch” target of 20% – and has achieved 32% so far. But Paris acknowledges that the toughest challenge still lies ahead. “Up to now, it’s largely been about concrete and rebar, so it’s within the knowledge of the industry. As we enter the fit-out stage, with a greater range of materials and cladding for the stations, that will be more challenging.”

Emissions control on site was an area not targeted by the ODA, partly because the costs involved in fitting non-road plant with diesel particulate filters (DPFs) was balanced against the remoteness and vastness of the Stratford site. But on Crossrail’s sites, surrounded by high-density housing and business uses, pollution was a serious concern.

So Crossrail took the unusual step of mandating the London mayor’s best practice guidance on construction dust and emissions contractually, compelling its contractors to retrofit DPFs or use cleaner Cat 3b engines. “We had a slow start, there was a lot of resistance from the industry,” acknowledges Paris. “People were concerned that the DPFs might affect warranties or overheat the engines and cause safety issues. But we pushed for it where viable, and now 73% of non-road vehicles have them fitted and Thames Tideway is adopting the standard too.”

On using Crossrail as a platform to build social sustainability, the aim is to employ a workforce as representative of London as possible, which means a workforce far more ethnically diverse than is typical for construction. Crossrail and its main contractors advertise vacancies via Job Centre Plus to pre-empt the “mates network”, work with local authorities to ensure job opportunities are spread along the line and hold regular jobs workshops. Around 2,500 people have joined the team through some form of job brokerage, including 285 apprentices – although the project still has to reach its 400 target.

Health and safety

On health and safety, Crossrail is building a more nuanced picture of contractors’ safety culture by moving away from the industry’s traditional indicator of accident frequency rates per 100,000 job hours. Its Health and Safety Performance Index (HSPI) measures contractors’ performance under six “leading indicators”: leadership and behaviour; design for health and safety; construction; workplace health; workplace safety; and performance improvement. Every six months, each contractor is evaluated in each area and the results are fed into the HSPI.

“We’ve had a 60% improvement compared to 18 months ago, at the early stages of construction,” says Steve Hails. “The difference is the HSPI focuses on the things that can be changed and influenced. Also, it’s about how you deal with the data, for us the interaction with the contractor once you’ve got it is vital.”

Hails says that Crossrail still looks at Accident Frequency Rates, but argues they are only as useful as the reliability of the reporting. “With the HSPI, there’s more transparency, so we feel we are finding out about the incidents that might have gone unreported.”

But one reason for the steep upward curve in the HSPI could be Crossrail’s Frontline Leadership Programme, a mentoring scheme that aims to raise the management performance of contractors’ mid-level supervisory staff. Although improving health and safety is the underlying goal, Hails says the FLP was deliberately designed to be broader in scope. “We looked at having a Safety Leadership Programme, but I didn’t want to restrict it to H&S. Great leaders are great leaders on health and safety, environment, and sustainability – we’re making them better all-round individuals that drives them to better performance in every area.”

The other safety agenda where Crossrail has been leading from the front is road safety, putting 7,000 HGV drivers working for contractors on mandatory training since 2009 and enforcing tough standards on HGV safety equipment (blind spot mirrors, rear warning signs and side-scan detection systems) that go beyond the FORS vehicle safety scheme. “If you don’t sign up, you don’t work for Crossrail,” Hails says. Its Cycle Safety Working Group is working with manufacturers on advances in hardware, and its Exchanging Places scheme with TfL trains cyclists to be aware of drivers’ blind-spots.

These are just some of the initiatives where Crossrail is using its buying power, interaction with the industry and sheer unavoidable presence in London to shift the wider industry’s expectations. Just as the Olympics put UK construction on an international podium in terms of major project delivery and setting new standards, Crossrail is creating a physical project and an aspirational legacy. If that can be handed to the next major projects – the Thames Tideway Tunnel, HS2 and Nuclear New Build – it could be Crossrail’s biggest achievement.

Take five: other areas of excellence

 

Crossrail’s Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy has trained more than 5,000 people in specialist tunnelling skills.

Facilities replicate key areas of a project, including a mock-up tunnel and a chamber for sprayed concrete lining operations. Crossrail invested £7.5m of the £13m cost.

 

In the UK, only 8.5% of engineering roles are filled by women, the lowest proportion in the EU.

Crossrail is addressing the shortfall by forging links with 33 schools, seeking young peoples’ ideas on the problem via an online challenge, and taking part in Women in Engineering Day.

 

Crossrail has a sideline in land reclamation, shifting 4 million tonnes of earth excavated from tunnels and stations – mostly by Thames barge – to Wallasea Island, Essex, where the RSPB is creating Europe’s largest man-made coastal reserve its contribution is around a third of what’s needed.

 

Estimates show that construction work causes 15% of London’s soot particle emissions. Crossrail has mandated the London mayor’s best practice guidance on emissions in its contracts, requiring 80% of non-exempt construction equipment to be fitted with Diesel Particulate Filters or Cat 3b engines.

 

 

Hybrid equipment, such as this Niftylift HR21 cherry picker similar to ones used on Crossrail by the Hochtief Murphy JV, combines an energy storage system with an internal power producer such as a combustion engine. They reduce the amount of fuel required, emit less CO2 and improve operative controllability compared with the traditional combustion engine only equipment.