http://www.modern-railways.com Apr il 2019 Modern Railways 95
Crossrail Update
L
ess than five months before the
Elizabeth Line was due to open
in December 2018, we were
informed the opening was off. The
new opening date was ‘autumn 2019’,
implying a delay of about a year.
Six months on and that opening
projection too is history. Forget 2019,
Crossrail Ltd Chief Executive Mark Wild
told the House of Commons Public
Accounts Committee in March: ‘There
is no opportunity to open this railway
in 2019 because of the compression
of the critical path and the stations’.
Should we forget a 2020 opening
too? According to Mr Wild: ‘We
would very, very much want to get
this done in 2020’. While it’s good
to hear the Crossrail top team have
got their mission statement nailed
down, confidence in when the line
will open appears in short supply
even at the top of the organisation.
With two projected openings
missed there is an understandable
caution towards announcing new
dates. Mark Wild said in January that
he hoped there would be something
more concrete to announce in
February (p10, February issue); this
has slipped to April, when we can
expect a ‘broad window’ for when
the central section of the railway will
open. This ‘broad window’, Mr Wild
said, would be ‘quite wide’. Expect a
timeframe of several months which
could reach beyond Christmas 2020.
At least there is evidence that
development of a new plan is
underway. Mr Wild told the Public
Accounts Committee that a logical
sequence for opening has been
approved by the Crossrail Ltd board
and was put to the Department for
Transport and the Mayor of London in
the second week of March. Suppliers
will be asked to validate productivity
rates which will then result in a range
of opening dates being taken to the
TfL board at the end of the month.
Down below in the Elizabeth
Line tunnels dynamic testing is
said to have been going better
than expected, although in early
March there was still only one train
in each tunnel able to operate at
linespeed. With a series of software
drops planned, the aim was to get
multi-train testing in each tunnel
by the end of March. This will allow
engineers to start flushing out any
problems and software bugs.PARALLEL UNIVERSE
Last year, following the news that
Crossrail would need more time
and more money, a new senior
team was appointed at Crossrail Ltd.
What appears to have happened
at around the same time is that
the Elizabeth Line scheme entered
a parallel universe – a world
where what we thought we knew
about it no longer applies.
Take the central stations. Crossrail’s
message has repeatedly been that,
while there remains work to be
done, the main area of difficulty
is the integration between tunnel
systems and those on board the
Class 345 trains. Fingers were pointed
at parent company TfL: given that it
is responsible for buying the trains
we heard it was unfair to heap
blame on Crossrail for problems
linked to the rolling stock software.
But as we have reported in recent
months, the state of the stations
has proved to be well behind what
we were led to believe and there
remains many months of work left
to do. And now this: speaking before
the Public Accounts Committee
Mark Wild said: ‘It is likely that we
will finish the railway systems before
the stations’. Stations, not systems,
appear to have taken centre stage.
The latest Crossrail update to
Transport for London’s Programmes
and Investment Committee notesthat the current rate of static testing
in stations remains behind plan
and is a significant focus of the
new programme and technical
leadership on the project. Around
65% of station systems installation
is said to have been completed.
With reports that Crossrail is
currently paying out £30 million a
week, achieving tier one contractor
substantial demobilisation (TOSD)
for each of the Crossrail stations,
shafts and portals is key to bringing
Elizabeth Line costs under control.
Fourteen of the 22 TOSD milestones
had been achieved by early March,
with Whitechapel and Plumstead
Portal TOSDs completed in January.
Given that the Government and
Londoners are having to pay extra
money to main contractors to get
the job done – we can assume the
quoted contract award prices too
are lost in the previous Crossrail
universe – TOSD is key to turning
off the cash tap. But it doesn’t mean
work at a site is completed – further
commissioning and integration
activity will still need to take place.
The more we learn about the
state of the Elizabeth Line, the
more it becomes clear that this is
no ordinary rail project overrun. It
has become clear that, rather than
being the sort of slippage which
would draw sympathy given the epic
scale and challenges of the Crossrailundertaking, there have been some
monumental failings. What remains a
triumph of modern rail engineering
has been eclipsed by the success
of Crossrail’s corporate messaging
machine, which kept the good news
coming for so long after the delivery
programme was falling apart.
The Public Accounts
Committee’s grilling of Mark Wild
and new chairman Tony Meggs
highlighted failings including
lack of transparency, inadequate
upward reporting to the Crossrail
board and insufficient attempts
by senior figures inside and
outside the organisation to ask the
pertinent questions. But was there
a deliberate attempt to obfuscate?
Members of the panel expressed
incredulity that references in
the Jacobs P-Rep report of
April 2018 – before Crossrail
accepted the December 2018
opening would be missed – did not
attract more scrutiny. Mark Wild said
schedules for the stations – which
now look set to be completed
after the signalling – started to slip
around 2016. Did senior executives
visit sites like Bond Street? It seems
incredible that some of the most
experienced and highly paid rail
project professionals with access
all areas privileges could not spot
when station works were running
more than a year late. a Dan HarveyBROAD WINDOW FOR
ELIZABETH LINE OPENING
Far from finished: work in progress at Bond Street station on 20 November 2018.095_MR_Apr 2019_crossrail.indd 95 12/03/2019 15:10