Season of goodwill
Carillion’s programme of work over Christmas 2015
Most people spend Christmas eating far too much turkey, followed by watching reruns of classic movies, slumped in an armchair and surrounded by family. But for many railway men and women, the festive season is busier than at any other time of year. Bank holidays mean fewer commuters, less disruption, and a better opportunity to get the big jobs done that would otherwise cause far too much nuisance to the travelling public.
Christmas 2015 was no different. A Network Rail team, with Carillion as principal contractor, took on a gargantuan task for Crossrail West (and a multitude of other packages) over a ten-day period from the evening of December 24 2015 to the morning of January 4 2016.
The holiday period allowed for services to be suspended on the Great Western Main Line for the ten-day blockade to allow critical works to be carried out across three separate workstreams:
Main line re-modelling for the Crossrail programme and the new Intercity Express Programme (IEP) rolling stock.
Refurbishing the train shed roof at Paddington.
Carrying out track renewal work on the Hammersmith & City Line at Paddington station.
With three-quarters of the 100km Elizabeth Line’s route running above ground through outer London, Berkshire and Essex, Network Rail is responsible for delivering a massive programme of works to transform the existing railway tracks, infrastructure, stations and signalling for Crossrail, Europe’s largest construction project. As principal contractor for Network Rail on Crossrail West, Carillion was in charge of coordinating the other parties. Usually, contractors are only incentivised to deliver their own work safely and efficiently, but on such a comprehensive scheme in a congested area, this was not going to be enough. True collaboration between all the teams was the only way to ensure successful delivery.
Carillion implemented a teamwork structure based on mutual trust that integrated all safety systems and allowed continuous communication between individuals at all levels throughout the blockade, leading to the project team adopting the motto: ‘We are all part of the same team and every contribution matters.’
Integration between all parties was key. The Carillion senior management team worked with Network Rail’s project delivery team and contractors to make sure that everyone understood the schedule and required milestones. Before
the blockade, team-building workshops were held, which featured audio and visual demonstrations of the delivery timetable and safety requirements.
And to make sure that real-time progress information was fed back to Project Management throughout the blockade, each core team reported in to what is known as the Gold Control Room (where Project Management is based) every six hours. They would provide updates on how work was going against the plan, any resource issues, and also safety issue reporting and resolution.
Carillion’s view is: “Everyone naturally became motivated to achieve the team’s commitments, pulling in the same direction to achieve the completion of works within a minutely planned ‘just in time’ programme, with sharing of best practice from team solutions, and creative resource allocation such as sharing plant between worksites during idle periods.”
The project has created a far more efficient way of making decisions on these types of projects, with the idea that the best-placed person in each team should be the one to make decisions, regardless of their parent organisation.
Following successful completion of the project, on January 6, Network Rail Managing Director of Infrastructure Projects Francis Paonessa wrote to Carillion to congratulate the team involved on the achievement: “I am proud to say that due to the meticulous planning, focus on contingency and close collaboration with you, we successfully handed back all works safely and on time… we couldn’t have delivered this without you.”
And Crossrail West Project Director Darren Coleman said: “We worked in excess of 275,000 man hours on Crossrail West. No other blockade has delivered as much as we have this Christmas. Well done and thank you!”
The collaboration on the project was what made it different to other projects of its kind in the past, and it was the factor that enabled on-time delivery. There was no ‘us’ and ‘them’ - communication was seamless.
Carillion’s Crossrail West Director Wayne Brigden is extremely proud of what was achieved at Christmas. He said: “We took a real collaborative approach with the LU track partnership and also Morgan Sindall. Basically, we made track alterations and a new Platform 14 (at Paddington).
“Track partnership for LU re-laid Platforms 15 and 16, and Morgan Sindall did a huge amount of work on the roof during the Christmas blockade. And we fully integrated that as one team. We had a lot of interface, where we needed to be working in close proximity to each other, and it was the first time that the NR lines and the LU lines had been done at the same time. They used NR trains to do their work and we used LU trains to do our work. There was a huge amount of integration.”
On this project, who you worked for was irrelevant, achieving the end goal efficiently, and with as little disruption as possible, was at the forefront of everyone’s mind.
They used NR trains to do their work and we used LU trains to do our work. There was a huge amount of integration. WAYNE BRIGDEN, Crossrail West Director, Carillion