Major project - over £50 million
Mike Putnam, a non-executive director of
Network Rail, joined Julia Bradbury on stage to
present the first of two project awards, this one
for projects valued at over £50 million. Mike
had judged the closely competitive entry with
Alasdair Reisner, the chief executive of the Civil
Engineering Contractors Association (CECA).
The winner was Siemens Mobility for the Derby
Station Area Remodelling Project, a £200 million
scheme that included a 79-day partial blockade
of Derby station, the longest continuous partial
closure ever undertaken in the UK.
The project represented a ‘once in a
generation’ opportunity to replace and
upgrade the life-expired infrastructure and
bring enhancements and improvements
both to the station and its approaches. Itis already delivering a range of significant
benefits to passengers, train operators and the
infrastructure owners and maintainers.
Highly commended was the Brighton Main
Line Improvement Project - an extensive
£67 million engineering programme, carried
out in partnership by Network Rail, the UK
Government and Govia Thameslink Railway
(GTR), to improve the reliability of the
railway as part of the Thameslink Resilience
Programme. The work took place between
September 2018 and May 2019 and focused
on an area at the southern end of the Brighton
main line, from Three Bridges to Brighton/
Lewes, where four Victorian tunnels (Balcombe,
Haywards Heath, Clayton and Patcham), ageing
track and signalling systems were causing
almost half of all delays experienced on trains
entering the southern end of the Thameslink
Core.
Despite its bad press, also highly commended
were the teams working on Great Western
Electrification. The Amey, Amey Inabensa and
Network Rail teams, working with Keltbray
Aspire and Lundy Projects, have delivered
transformational improvements to rail service
capacity and performance between Maidenhead
and Westerleigh junction and Reading to
Newbury. A staggering 134 track miles of OLE
installation has been constructed across a
number of distinct programmes in an array of
disciplines.Smaller project - under £50 million
The same judges had reviewed the entries for
projects under £50 million, which can sometimes
be overshadowed by their bigger siblings
but are nevertheless still vital to the railway’s
wellbeing.Siemens take the win
for the 'Major project
over £50 million'
award. (above and
below)42 RAIL PARTNERSHIP AWARDS
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