11 July 2012

The Farringdon Station Construction Team has delivered another significant programme milestone by delivering all the Stations' five lifts on time and achieving National recognition by winning this years Network Rail Partnering award for a Major Project.

Costain and Laing O’Rourke’s joint venture, CoLOR, has transformed Farringdon Station as part of the Thameslink upgrade programme. The £200million improvements include greater passenger interchange capacity, the infrastructure to manage new 12-car trains and provisions for the new world-class Crossrail network.

The Farringdon Project not only won the Major Project award, shared with the Western Concourse at King’s Cross, but on Friday 6 July five new Station lifts were opened for public use. 

The lifts allow the Station to be step free from both the London Underground (LU)platforms (1&2) and the First Capital Connect platforms (3&4) to street level.  It is the first time five lifts have been constructed and commissioned at the same time in a functioning London Underground station environment.

The Project Director for Network Rail, Mike Brown, said: “A particular mention should be made of the performance of CoLOR & KONE (Lift installers) who have stepped up to the mark over the past months, working in an extremely challenging construction environment to deliver on time. The collective performance and collaborative management of the Farringdon team, in its entirety, played no small part in this achievement.”

The Major Project Award was given to Farringdon in recognition of the successful complex construction of a new Integrated Ticket Hall, extensions to platforms 3 & 4, installation of new Power Systems, redevelopment of the Grade 2 listed LU building and all in a live Station environment.

The Station, some of it dating back to 1864, is unique in that it’s a London Underground owned and operated asset which incorporates the Thameslink Bedford to Brighton line.  This meant that a high level of detailed planning was required to facilitate the amount of construction adjacent to the LU lines and the Network Rail tracks; the vast majority of work was carried out during either planned possessions or engineering hours, with no overruns throughout the length of the project.  Full station operation was maintained, thanks to bespoke temporary facilities for the 60,000 passengers that use the station every day.

The team was also highly commended in the Heritage and Sustainability categories.

Dan Powrie, Costain’s Construction Director, summarized the latest achievements:

“The Farringdon team has repeatedly delivered and the handover of the lifts was only achieved by the successful collaboration of all parties; everybody wanted the same goal and everybody went the extra mile to achieve it.  The Partnering Award is the icing on the cake and provides the entire Project team with the recognition they deserve for providing an outstanding world class Project.”

 

Ends