CIVILS, CONSTRUCTION & STATIONS
Ramping up the work on Reading Viaduct
Kevin Brown, Network Rail’s civil engineering project manager on Reading, and William Smith, project director at Balfour Beatty, talk to RTM about the latest developments on the £45m Reading Viaduct. David Stevenson and Alexandra Clarke report.
W
ork on the £45m Reading Viaduct has reached a major milestone, with
principal contractor Balfour Beatty handing over the viaduct to Network Rail ready for track installation on the structure.
The viaduct, which forms part of Network Rail’s £895m redevelopment of the railway in and around Reading, is expected to cut delays caused by congestion on the tracks to the west of the station. When it opens in 2015, it will create enough capacity for an additional four passenger trains per hour as well as more freight trains.
In July, Her Majesty the Queen officially opened the redeveloped Reading station, which has been transformed in the last five years by Network Rail, and marked a major milestone in the overall Reading project.
The refurbished station – completed a year ahead of schedule and within budget – now has two entrances, 15 platforms including five new platforms, new retail facilities and a new passenger bridge three times the size of the original footbridge.
Although the station is the most visible aspect of the project for the travelling public, in many ways the viaduct that allows the grade separation of the lines is a more important development.
Work on the viaduct has recently passed a number of key stages, with the third of five sectional schemes being delivered by the principal contractor to Network Rail. Between now and when the viaduct is expected to open in 2015, Balfour Beatty is to complete the work on the Feeder Line, to be delivered in October 2014, and the Festival Line, due for completion in January 2015.
Discussing the handover of the viaduct, Kevin 34 | rail technology magazine Aug/Sep 14
Brown, Network Rail’s civil engineering project manager on Reading, told RTM: “We have handed over the full trackbed to the track team. That whole piece of structure is essentially complete. All the beams are in, and all the piers are there, so that key part of the structure, which is the majority of it, is actually complete.”
Carillion is the contractor for the track works on top of the viaduct, while Balfour Beatty has been handling the civils element.
William Smith, project director at Balfour Beatty, who started on the project in January 2014, has overseen a number of key civils works in order to get to the current handover stage.
He told us that following the harsh winter weather, the on-site team was working 24/7 for at least six months to ensure the construction of the bridge piers, box structures and culverts were completed on time.
Getting the foundations right
However, before any of this work could be completed, the teams had to ensure that the ground was ready and stabilised for the flyover’s construction.
This included the completion of the piling phase for the viaduct, which started in May 2013. The £3.8m foundation package also included the installation of 980 continuous flight auger piles to support the viaduct structure.
During the ground improvement phase, the team also had to install 1,685 vibro concrete columns, to support the ramps at the eastern and western ends.
Brown said the teams have filled approximately 21,500 linear metres of board piles. “If you put all of our piles end-to-end they would add up to 21,500m. We’ve also done 10,500m of other
concrete piling; shallower concrete piling for ground improvements,” he said.
Working together
Although the viaduct contract was not based on an alliance structure, it was a target-cost contract. Balfour Beatty and Network Rail have worked “hand in glove”, according to Smith, who recently celebrated his 25th anniversary working for Balfour Beatty.
“However, in all that time I have never felt closer and more connected on a project,” he said.
As mentioned earlier, the wet winter weather caused some problems in the production and construction phases.
But, while working in these extreme conditions, it also highlighted the collaborative nature of the teams not just at Network Rail and Balfour Beatty, but also further down the supply chain.
Brown told us that at one stage the concrete sub-contractor, Sword Contracts, had its batching plant flooded. The project partners were informed that because of this it would be shut down for about two weeks.
“We could have just sat back and said ‘well, that’s a problem for that supplier’ – but we couldn’t just stop work,” he said. “At that time we were pouring 500m³ of concrete a day, which is quite a significant amount, and if we’d lost a week or two in production we couldn’t regain that in the programme.”
So, Network Rail and Balfour Beatty took a truly hands-on approach: they sent workers down to the flooded unit with pumps and within a couple of days the site was back online.
Smith said that for a long time “you couldn’t
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