BOB IBELL | INTERVIEW


the Fire Brigade was that that they would attend in any emergency, and advise; they would enter the tunnels only in restricted circumstances because although they were equipped with Long Duration Breathing Apparatus they were not trained to go into the tunnels for any distance or use any of the tunnel transport. “So the Channel Tunnel was six years


of my life. I came away in 1990. Then the Jubilee Line Extension came up.” His current company is called LBA, and


is based next to Borough High Street. London Bridge Associates (LBA) is so named because the founders came from the team that built London Bridge station on the Jubilee Line Extension. Borough High Street (BHS) itself is a major thoroughfare, with shops and residential, leading to London Bridge on the south bank of the River Thames. The new BHS ticket hall was to be positioned under the street. “The intention originally was to close


half the street, build half the ticket hall, and then reopen the half-street and build the other half. But it really wasn’t going to work. So the team developed an alternative proposal: we sank piles either side of the street, put in a full road deck over them, and then excavated, supported the services underneath and constructed the ticket hall. It’s a bit more common these days but then it was very new. We managed to get complete closures of BHS for three weekends to install the road deck; and the whole thing worked brilliantly and we finished well ahead of the three weekend timespan.” Obviously there would be noise and


dust and mud during that process. “So we suggested to any resident who didn’t want to stay while the work was going on that we would fly them to Lanzarote for the weekend. Not many people took it. Some did, and that was fine. It was all the matter, once again, of going about things properly and understanding relative costs. The Lanzarote flights cost peanuts compared to the cost of the project, and it kept people happy and reduced complaints. “The Jubilee Line Extension was a project


with a wonderful team and really good clients. But it got held up early on by the Heathrow tunnel collapse.” In October 1994, tunnels for the Heathrow Express experienced three collapses within three days. Management errors, poor workmanship and quality control were blamed. HSE called it the worst UK civil engineering disaster in the last quarter century.


“The Heathrow project was using NATM,


and that is what we were also using. The first thing that happened was we got a request: Would we pause work? Please, could we shut the faces down just temporarily and set up an inspection regime to make sure that they were all safe? “This was a Friday night, and we were


expecting to start again on the Monday. It turned out it was nine months before they let us start again. In Parliament, some minister – I’m not even sure who it was – stood up and said there wouldn’t be any more tunnelling until the problem has been sorted out. And we were in the middle of a very major project. What do you do? “So in those nine months we tried to get


on with everything we could get on with that wasn’t actually NATM (or, as the system in UK came to be developed - sprayed concrete lining (SCL)). We did all kinds of things like changing the design, modifying the ventilation tunnels, changing to precast lined tunnels for instance. “When we did restart some of the


work was fantastic; we squeezed shafts into some really small spaces between buildings. The main station, which you see today as lined with Spheroidal Graphite Iron (SGI) rings, had been intended to be of SCL temporary lining with in-situ concrete secondary lining. However, we realised that the SGI linings we had bought as a contingency could be useful, moving the segments through the work area to catch up the programme. “We had all kinds of settlement issues


and the delay caused some issues because it left temporary works standing for longer than intended, but compensation grouting worked successfully and the BHS deck worked extremely well. The relationships built up at all levels between the project team and the contractors team laid the foundations for a successful, collaboration-driven, turnaround and a successful conclusion. Central to this was that problems were discussed and often solved after work on a Friday when the team would assemble for a beer before the weekend in the Market Porter pub.” Towards the end of the project Taylor


Woodrow decided it was getting out of infrastructure work to become, simply, a housebuilder. “I and others argued against it, but the board thought it would be a less risky business. “So a bunch of us who didn’t want to


be housebuilders – it had been a brilliant team – negotiated a joint payoff deal and


set up a series of discussions about our future. We held them above what is now the Brindisi Tapas Bar, which we used as a site office for the contract. As a result of these discussions, we formed a company and called it LBA – London Bridge Associates. The company is still there 23 years on, no longer above the tapas bar but certainly in offices only a few metres away in a beautiful building, in Southwark Street, called the Hop Exchange. “We left Taylor Woodrow on a Friday and


we started as LBA on the Monday putting together the Costain Skanska Bachy bid for the tunnels on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL).” The high-speed rail link was constructed


several years after the Channel Tunnel was completed, and was a quite separate project. “There was a small LBA team leading the Joint Venture. The ground was difficult at times, the contract was a tough one, but as a result of forming an agreement with the client, the project manager, and other contractors, the London Tunnels Alliance delivered the tunnels and the Stratford Box on time and on budget – quite rare for a major tunnelling scheme. That is where we really started seeing what collaboration can do.” Since then, LBA has flourished, in part


because of collaboration: it is entirely employee-owned. Project management and consultancy in tunnelling and underground space is its business – “HS1, HS2, Crossrail, Hinkley Point C Marine Works, York Potash, and MetroLink in Dublin have been among our projects, and these days we are looking at consultancy farther afield for example New York using our London Bridge Consultant Network. The challenges, I’m pleased to say, persist but that is what we thrive on.” And he sums up what he sees as the


essentials of engineering: “Look for the pitfalls. Spend your time looking for them and understanding how you’re going to deal with them. Select the right people for your team, understand their strengths, and play to them. “I would like to add that I have found


my last fifty years in civil engineering and tunnelling fulfilling, challenging at times but always enjoyable. There is nothing like the satisfaction of a contract or commission completed on time, to budget, and with a happy client. Hard work is expected and rewarded. I will never be rich but I will be comfortable and I would recommend the life to all young men and women.”


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