ELECTRIFICATION
Electrification opening up huge opportunities
Going into Control Period 5 (CP5) there has been a signifi cant increase in investment funding for electrifi cation on the UK’s rail network. Roger Dickinson, regional director of Infrastructure Projects, Southern, at Network Rail, discusses the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
A
major area of investment within CP5 is in the growth and expansion of electrifi cation
across the UK’s rail network, but in order to deliver this programme effectively the supply chain capacity must be grown and employed effi ciently.
This is according to Roger Dickinson, regional director of Network
Rail Infrastructure
Projects in the Southern region. Speaking at Infrarail 2014, he repeated the point that before CP4, there hadn’t been any signifi cant new electrifi cation for more than 20 years.
He said: “So, we need to go from the position of having a low base of skilled people and a low level of people in the business who can do the work to enable the electrifi cation of the network. We understand that now, and can make this happen alongside our supply chain partners.”
During CP5, Network Rail is to deliver an additional 2,000 single track
miles of new
electrifi ed line and is expected to increase the percentage of electrifi ed railway on the network
from 40% to 51% by 2019. No mean feat.
To achieve this goal, the programme has received signifi cant cash fl ow with a total cumulative value in excess of £4bn, of which over £2bn is for the electrifi cation element alone.
And, over the next fi ve years, Network Rail will carry out work across a number of projects including the new electric spine – linking the East and West Midlands and Yorkshire with the south of England – to achieve its goals.
Other projects include EGIP, East Coast Main Line, TransPennine, Micklefi eld to Selby, North West Electrifi cation, Walsall to Rugeley, South Wales Valley Lines, Great Western Electric Trains Programme (& Crossrail), Gospel Oak to Barking and electrifi cation campaign renewals.
40 | rail technology magazine Jun/Jul 14
of our changing business,” said Dickinson. “We knew that we needed to engage with our partners and that’s what the frameworks have done. We at Network Rail cannot deliver this programme on our own. And we are doing this in order to deliver the outputs we require in the next fi ve years.”
Six tender frameworks have been set out with one in Southern, one in Wales and Western, one in Scotland and the north east and three in the Central region, that will be used to deliver the electrifi cation programme over the next fi ve years.
The suppliers to the framework
Collaborative frameworks In order to deliver
these programmes, it
was agreed that a co-ordinated national approach with a prequalifi cation and tender process would be conducted and packaged as frameworks to suit the individual regional requirements – optimising resources and materials along the way (the frameworks were covered in detail in the April/May 2014 edition of RTM).
“We need to resource the programme and keep it safe, and we need to do that considering a number of specifi c challenges that are part
are Carillion Powerlines, Costain and STEP UP Alliance, which is made up of Volkers, Murphy & Siemens, delivering the work in Scotland and the north east. In the central region ABC Electrifi cation, an alliance comprised of Alstom, Babcock and Costain; Carillion Powerlines; and Balfour Beatty will take charge of the three frameworks there.
In Southern Amey Inabensa shall deliver the framework and Amey and ABC Electrifi cation will deliver Wales and Western.
According to Network Rail, the benefi ts of this structure are that it greatly improves collaboration on safety, provides a defi ned work-bank of schemes to be delivered, supports investment in training and development of the resource pool, and improves innovation technology.
and reliability of
Dickinson said: “There are objectives to creating this type of relationship. By having fewer suppliers doing more work, we can work much more collaboratively – making sure the conversations being had around safety continue to happen. Also because suppliers can plan fi ve years of work, they can start to invest in people, infrastructure and technology – which gives us lots of value add.”
The nationally facilitated and coordinated
strategy has received signifi cant endorsement from the supply chain and industry groups, with Jeremy Candfi eld, director general of the Railway Industry Association, advocating the
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