KEITH BOWERS | INTERVIEW


The BTS James Clark Medal for 2025 was awarded to Dr Keith Bowers for, as the citation reads, “his considerable contribution to the UK & International Tunnelling profession, especially his exceptional dedication to nurturing the next generation of tunnellers”. Dr Bowers is a Director at Cowi. He has also been Head of Profession for Civil Engineering and Built Environment at Transport for London (TfL) and Head of Tunnels for London Underground (LU). Currently he is Tunnels & Systems Director for the new Lower Thames Crossing, a major piece of infrastructure which will tunnel under the Thames estuary between Kent and Essex and allow transport to flow north and south without touching London itself.


e talked at a fortunate moment. It was the day after the late 2025 Budget, in which the


Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced £891 million in funding for the Lower Thames Crossing (LTC), of which Dr Keith Bowers is Project Director for the tunnels. It has been an eventful year for him in other respects: in April, after twenty-odd years in the planning and four years in the building, the Silvertown tunnel opened. That also goes under the Thames to the east of London. Bowers was technical lead during the procurement phase of that project. So there were milestones in two major crossings of the Thames, two major long-term easings of London’s transport problems, and Bowers was in on both of them. “The 900-odd million was the last


missing piece of the public funding for LTC,” he says. “The intent has been that the main delivery phase will be done with private investment but the government has paid for the planning and will also support the early construction work, up to a point in time probably two years away. After that it becomes a private-funded venture.” Silvertown has been his other major


decade-long project. It consists of twin- bored road tunnels under the river and the Greenwich peninsula to relieve the appallingly-congested (and aging – one bore dates back to 1897) Blackwall tunnel. He has been involved with it since 2014 and was technical lead during the procurement phase, including the competitive dialogue. “Silvertown took quite a while in the gestation” he says. “We had some


Above: CTRL London Tunnels For Crossrail2, which was a separate


...PEOPLE DO TEND TO LIKE THESE PROJECTS ONCE THEY ARE FINISHED.


interesting challenges during its development but it has come through probably quicker than some.” Crossrail, now the newly-opened Elizabeth Line, is an obvious parallel – and one on which he was engaged both on behalf of TfL as the future maintainer and also for Crossrail itself as an expert panel member. Crossrail was approved in 2007, began construction in 2009, and opened in 2022. “Some of these things are very slow burn,” says Bowers.


TfL programme, he was the initial Head of Engineering when TfL set up the organisation in 2015. Planning permissions and consents for such projects are of necessity not an overnight process. “You do have a lot of stakeholders.


It is


not simplistically just the people who live next door. There are all sorts of community interests. “The system in our Western democracy


puts great emphasis on giving people the opportunity to express their views. The downside is that sometimes we can take a very long time to do it. It takes a long time to consult. So that, plus the time it takes to assemble the finance for a project, can make it frustrating from the point of view of those wanting to get the benefits of delivering something. “It is something the current government


Above Early days of SCL in UK, with Keith Bowers in the pit bottom at the Heathrow express Trial Tunnel, 1992


has been picking up, recognising that there is a challenge in the infrastructure sector. They are going to look particularly at the planning requirements we have. But even if we get the planning system perfectly slick these things do take a while to build and there is sometimes disruption during the build so you can understand why the public mood is different at different stages.” But as he points out, people do tend to like these projects once they are finished. As Head of Tunnels for London Underground, Bowers contributed to major constructions and upgrades at, among others, Kings Cross, Tottenham Court Road and Bank stations while a few hundred thousand commuters were using them to get to work each day. Getting tunnelling machinery in there and using it


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