STATION MODERNISATION
Logistics key to London Bridge upgrade success
The first phase of the dramatic London Bridge station rebuild has gone live. David Stevenson caught up with Clive Loosemore, delivery director for the project, about the ongoing works.
he extensive redevelopment work at London Bridge station, a vital part of the government-sponsored £6.5bn Thameslink project, is on schedule with two new platforms – 15 and 14 – and their longer, wider canopies brought into use on 31 March 2014.
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International engineering group Costain won the Network Rail contract to help increase the capacity of the station and make it fit for 21st century travellers, unclogging existing bottlenecks to enable more frequent services.
The scope of the contract included the removal of the existing roof, the complete demolition of all the platforms and the formation of a new concourse at ground level that will be the size of the pitch at Wembley Stadium.
Demolition work
“We’re rebuilding the whole station through nine phases of work,” said Clive Loosemore, delivery director at Costain. “We’ve demolished three platforms completely, as well as demolishing the existing brick arches that supported these platforms, as part of stage one.”
He explained that a key factor in bringing the two new platforms online ‘to the day’ was the removal of the existing roof by February 2013, a major piece of work performed whilst the station was fully functional and with no lost train time.
During the first phase of the project, Costain also started the demolition of the existing brick arches to form the new ground level concourse in May last year.
154 | rail technology magazine Apr/May 14
Loosemore said: “The concourse, when completed, will be larger than the pitch at Wembley Stadium. Through this first phase 21% of the demolition was completed with three existing terminating platforms taken out of use.
“Following the demolition work, continuous flight augering (CFA) piles – 1,050mm in diameter and over 30m long – were constructed and these are the foundations for the concrete columns and crossheads that support the bridge decks.
“Precast concrete units form the platforms and off-site prefabricated cassettes form the platform canopies. Installation of these off-site constructed components was key to meeting the fast-track programme.”
Prefabricated canopies
To ensure that both the schedule and quality were maintained for the project, major sections of the new platforms and the iconic ‘eyebrow’ canopies were prefabricated off-site.
Before bringing the canopies on-site, Costain’s steel subcontractors, Watson Steel (now known as Severfield-Watson Structures Ltd following a merger) and Prater, created a 60m mock- up of the canopy steelwork and cladding at their airfield premises at Dalton near Thirsk. The original constructability prototype was dismantled and re-built once to prove the construction method.
The facility was then used both as a training ground for the people who would be erecting the canopies and also allowing all stakeholders, including the end-user, to have the opportunity of viewing it and contributing to the final design.
Loosemore explained: “They put it together in a couple of weeks. We were then able to take the end-users, the railway systems and maintenance people up there to have a look, as well as the architects, and get it agreed. Then we went into fabrication. The canopy prefabrication takes place in Bolton.”
Work on the canopy is split between three subcontractors: Watson is handling the steelwork, Prater is constructing the roof ‘cassettes’ or panels that have all the containment for the wiring systems, and the containment and fittings are installed by NG Bailey.
Eventually, added Loosemore, the new canopy will cover 15 platforms and the sections, if laid end-to-end, would stretch 4km.
One challenge the Costain delivery director identified during phase one was that the finishing work on the platforms, including
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