Old Oak Common: nno ordinary station
Old Oak Common super-hub station, where Crossrail meets HS2, was granted planning permission on May 19. The team behind the delivery of the station were given access to the site on June 2. MARION GOURLAY meets the team…
Looking across the recently flattened, desolate moonscape of this former 52-acre Great Western depot and industrial area, south of Willesden Junction in west London, it’s hard to imagine it will be home to the UK’s largest, busiest and best-connected new railway station since Victorian times.
Old Oak Common (OOC) will be no ordinary station. It is already being described as an architectural triumph of truly eyewatering proportions.
For many, OOC station is not simply a rail station project - importantly, it will be key to the transformation of the entire area. The station will act as a gateway to the development of a brand new neighbourhood adjacent to the site, with the aim of creating tens of thousands of much-needed new homes and jobs. It will be integrated into the local area through creative urban design that maximises green space and the station’s connection with local bus, cycling and walking routes.
Occupying the 52-acre site of the former Great Western Railway depot, the Old Oak Common super-hub will eventually serve an estimated 250,000 passenger per day.
“Old Oak Common station will not only act as a catalyst for the regeneration of this neglected part of west London, it is already helping to kick-start the UK’s economy. It will create local jobs to build the station, and importantly the procurement of each element of the project will involve companies from across the UK,” says SYSTRA’s Managing Director of UK Engineering Steve Higham.
It is a complex job which the delivery team have fully embraced. The delivery of OOC is a joint venture between Balfour Beatty, Vinci and SYSTRA (BBVS) and was awarded in September 2019.
Each of the individuals involved in the management of the project are highly experienced in delivering challenging rail infrastructure projects in the UK as well as overseas. In week one of the BBVS appointment, the team immediately came together with HS2 to integrate both sides into one high-performing unit. This partnership approach means that BBVS work as an extension of HS2 rather than a traditional top-down approach. It’s a style of working that allows good ideas to prevail, such as the use of virtual reality.
OOC BBVS Project Director Nigel
Russel explains: “I’ve worked on transport infrastructure projects throughout my 40-year
career and I can honestly say that HS2 has fully embraced collaborative working in its truest sense.
“This style of management means that any emerging issue or potential problem is discussed openly among the team - which includes the client - and solutions are worked out together and developed quickly.”
BBVS Lead Design Manager Bruno Sarret elaborates on “why creating such an open and collaborative working culture (and spirit) is key to success”.
He explains: “Eighty per cent of problems on big infrastructure projects are actually not technical - instead they normally happen when there is a breakdown in communication. That’s why, from the start, HS2 invested in creating a one-team approach - from co-locating in the same office and integrated teamwork activities, to regular one-team forums and weekly ‘town hall’style discussions. The level of trust built up among the team has, without doubt, helped us overcome our most recent challenge of working productively at home throughout the pandemic.”
OOC super-hub station will have a total of 14 platforms. There will be six 450-metre-long high-speed platforms, built underground and which connect with eight conventional rail platforms at ground level serving the Great Western Main Line towards the West Country and Wales, Heathrow Express, as well as integrating the new east-west Elizabeth Line (Crossrail) services.
It is estimated that OOC station will serve 250,000 passengers per day and will ultimately connect with eight of the UK’s largest cities. Journey times from Old Oak Common to London Euston will be five minutes, to Birmingham’s Curzon Street 31 minutes, and to Manchester Airport 56 minutes.
To put the scale of the project into perspective, BBVS Station Construction Manager Brendon Seymour says that Crossrail’s Whitechapel station has three escalators and 11 lifts, whereas OOC will have a colossal 44 escalators and 52 lifts.
Much thought has gone into designing OOC’s naturally lit concourse, to create a pleasing passenger journey experience while reducing future energy consumption. A 25,000m2 atrium roof, inspired by the site’s industrial heritage, will link the two halves of the station and will use 3,700 tonnes of steel. With OOC’s carbon footprint at the forefront of design, the roof space will also house solar panels.
The recent Government backing following the Oakervee Review means that work can finally begin on removing 900,000m3 of ‘London clay’, to create the space required for the 1km-long rectangular station box at a depth of 20 metres. That’s an equivalent volume of stacking 6,300 Routemaster buses side by side.
The piling alone will require the removal of a further 175,000m3, making a total of more than one million cubic metres of excavated material.
BBVs Site Logistics Lead Paul Rasmussen explains that to overcome the site’s limited access along the single-carriageway road (Old Oak Common Lane) and to simultaneously reduce lorry movements across London, a 1km-long conveyor belt will be assembled to transport the excavated material to Willesden Euro Terminal railhead, to be removed by rail freight and then recycled.
There’s no doubt that Old Oak Common station will be both world-leading and record-breaking in equal measure. It is already creating jobs and will provide much-needed impetus for a future new Park Royal district in west London.
Building a new railway station for the UK on this scale will be an incredible achievement, something to make us proud as an industry and as a nation.
Old Oak Common station will not only act as a catalyst for the regeneration of this neglected part of west London, it is already helping to kick-start the UK’s economy, Steve Higham, Managing Director of UK Engineering, SYSTRA