Birmingham New St
The £750m redevelopment of Birmingham New Street station was a monumental task, but Mace (principal contractor) and Atkins (lead designer) passed every test, and have gained deserved recognition by claiming the Project of the Year accolade at RAIL’s Natio
The £750m redevelopment of Birmingham New Street station passed a series of challenging logistical tests.
Birmingham New Street station sits at the heart of Britain’s cross-country railway. It sends and receives trains from all corners of the country and serves its city with a wide range of suburban services. Its destination board reads like a gazetteer… fast to London or a local towards Wolverhampton.
It’s a busy station, with hundreds of trains and 170,000 passengers every day. It’s also been a construction site for five years, as Network Rail and principal contractor Mace ripped away the station built in the 1960s by British Rail and replaced it with a vast, airy atrium.
BR designed its station for 60,000 passengers a day. Network Rail’s can now handle 300,000 a day, the company reckons. Downstairs, trains continued running (one every 37 seconds on average), while upstairs Mace was marshalling 3,000 staff across 80 contractors. That’s no mean feat while passengers keep streaming past.
The hoardings were cleared away in September 2015, allowing passengers their first proper look at their new surroundings, before the Queen officially opened the new-look station last November.
On the day the Queen visited, NR Chairman Sir Peter Hendy said: “It was an honour to welcome the Queen to Birmingham New Street and be part of a very special day for Birmingham. For such an impressive and transformed station, it was fitting that it was officially re-opened by Her Majesty.
“Birmingham New Street is helping to boost the regeneration of the city centre, as well as providing the millions of passengers who use it with a modern, 21st century station. With the Grand Central development above it, it is a unique station which is vital to the continued development of Birmingham and the wider region.”
NR Project Director Chris Montgomery said: “The Queen officially re-opening Birmingham New Street station is the culmination of many years of hard work by thousands of people involved in the project. This is a proud day for the project team, for Network Rail and for Birmingham.”
At the earlier public opening, Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce Chief Executive Paul Faulkner had said: “The transformation of Birmingham New Street station will mark a sea-change for everyone who uses this important gateway to Birmingham. First impressions are important, and the new-look station will greatly enhance the experience for businesspeople, commuters, shoppers and tourists who arrive in the city in their thousands every day.”
NR Chief Executive Mark Carne commented: “Rebuilding one of the busiest stations in the country without impacting
on passengers’ journeys has been a major challenge, but I’m extremely proud to say that Network Rail and our partners on this project have done just that. That’s a significant achievement for everyone who has helped build this fantastic new station, of which they - and all of Birmingham - can be very proud indeed.”
Birmingham City Council Leader Sir Albert Bore said: “Birmingham New Street station has undergone a magnificent transformation to become a vibrant, spacious and bright transport hub suitable for our city, and for the people of Birmingham to be proud of.
“The station redevelopment has been a key project for the city, stimulating economic growth and regeneration. And with the added creation of Grand Central, it has provided one of the best-connected retail spaces in the country. This is sure to have a catalytic effect on further regeneration of the city centre and attracting businesses to Birmingham.”
Passengers were impressed, with subsequent National Rail Passenger Survey scores
registering a sharp rise. Last spring’s survey recorded 88% of passengers happy with the station. Before the work started, the station had recorded just 61% satisfied.
Speaking after the latest results, Station Manager Patrick Power said: “It is really satisfying to see that passengers continue to enjoy their experience at the redeveloped Birmingham New Street, and that we have been able to build on the previous rise we saw after the station re-opened last year.
“This is the first full set of results since the full re-opening, and gives us a more accurate view of the new facilities and the impact they have had on passengers. However, there is always room for continued improvement, and we will continue to strive to provide an even better service to passengers.”
Network Rail started the project with distinct aims. It wanted a station that could support over 150% growth in passenger numbers - from 32 million to 52 million. And it wanted to improve the passenger experience by having a bigger, brighter station with better facilities.
The project was to refurbish 12 platforms, and to increase the vertical circulation up to concourse level and across the length of all the platforms. NR was very keen that the station acted as a catalyst for urban regeneration on the south side of Birmingham. Finally, it wanted to deliver the project in two phases, to limit the impact on the operational railway and the passenger experience during construction.
Funding the £ 750 million project came from four sources: the Department for Transport; Birmingham City Council; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; and Centro. John Lewis jumped aboard later when Network Rail secured a deal to bring in a flagship department store covering 23,000m2. This led to plenty of fresh design work for Mace & Atkins partway through the project, but the contractors took this in their stride.
To add to the design challenge, there was limited access to drawings and documentation for the original 1960s building, and limited access to occupied and operational parts of the station in order to conduct the surveys required to fill the information vacuum caused by the lack of drawings. These surveys had to be done during construction, which added to the contractors’ headaches.
Further complicating matters was the architectural competition for the atrium. The winning design is very striking, but it led to major changes to the building, including adding the atrium and a polished stainless steel facade. Engineers and architects do not always sit easily, but Mace managed these relationships effectively to deliver a striking building.
While all this work was going on, the building had to absorb changing loads - workers removed 6,000 tonnes of concrete from above the station. Engineers could not forget that their floor was the roof to the platforms below their feet. They were also working under stricter regulations because New Street is classed as a sub-surface station. Finding asbestos added to the challenge.
The project linked its refurbishment of New Street station with the Grand Central shopping centre of 152,400m2 and 67 shops. Passengers can flow seamlessly between the concourse and the shopping centre. There’s also a good selection of shops around the concourse (40 of them), with plenty of eateries to tempt anyone changing trains. Far better to try these eateries than something from a passing trolley on a train.
The new concourse that stretches out under that bright, airy atrium measures 26,000m2. That’s five times bigger than Euston’s. It provides better connections for passengers through and around the station, and created five new access points in addition to the original three. Further changes have made it easier to change from trains to taxis, buses, trams, cars and cycles.
The atrium’s transparent roof consists of ETFE (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene), which is the material that covers the domes of Cornwall’s Eden Project. It is a translucent material that is strong, durable, has a high corrosion resistance, is self-cleaning and recyclable. It is also much lighter than glass.
All this adds up to what has been claimed as Europe’s largest refurbishment project. Over 14,000 people have worked on the project, with
While all this work was going on, the building had to absorb changing loads - workers removed 6,000 tonnes of concrete from above the station. Engineers could not forget that their floor was the roof to the platforms below their feet.
3,000 on site daily at its busiest periods. The project also took on 100 apprentices, giving them a great grounding into a wide range of disciplines.
Despite these numbers, its health and safety record has been good. The National Rail Awards’ diligent judging panel noted just four reportable (RIDDOR) accidents over the five years of the project. This included one period in which two million man days were worked without a single RIDDOR incident.
New Street and Grand Central is Network Rail’s first trackside building to win a BREEAM rating of ‘excellent’ under the Building Research Establishment’s environmental and sustainability assessment scheme.
The rating recognised a wealth of sustainable features that the station now boasts, including a solar thermal system to generate hot water, sub-metering for all water, heating and cooling to monitor energy consumption, and an energy-efficient lighting system.
Solar panels generating electricity sit alongside the building’s green roof, which contains over 14 different species of plant to contribute to the area’s local ecology and reduce rainwater run off into the drainage system. This renewable technology is expected to reduce the building’s carbon emissions by 10%.
New Street is also Network Rail’s first station to incorporate a standalone combined heat and power (CHP) plant that delivers electricity for the station with waste heat transferred into the city’s district heating scheme. It offers considerable carbon reducing benefits, achieving better energy efficiency performance because it captures and uses heat that would otherwise have been wasted.
Network Rail’s contractors used lean construction techniques and building information modelling (BIM) to cut six months from the project. BIM is increasingly used in major projects to provide electronic information about buildings and structures, usually in the form of 3D drawings.
Overall, this project transformed one of Britain’s most important railway stations. It’s placed New Street station in the heart of Birmingham, acting as a shining beacon of modernity in this most classic of Victorian cities.
Over 14,000 people have worked on the project, with 3,000 on site daily at its busiest periods.