Tunnel VisIon
Sarah Lawton digs into the matter of health and safety
on Europe’s largest underground construction project
with Steve Hails, Health & Safety Director at Crossrail
Health & Safety Director Steve Hails
T
he new Crossrail underground railway received royal
assent following nearly thirty-five years of planning
and development and the UK Parliament passed the
Crossrail Act on 22 July 2008. The confirmed route was from
Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west, to Shenfield and
Abbey Wood in the east, with new rail stations and tunnels
under central London. The route has since extended the
original route, beyond Maidenhead to Reading.
Crossrail broke ground on 15 May 2009 at Canary
Wharf, when Mayor Boris Johnson and the then Transport
Secretary Lord Adonis launched the first pile into the North
Dock in Docklands, the location of the new Canary Wharf
station.
With a £14.8 billion funding envelope for
infrastructure alone, the Crossrail project will
add ten per cent capacity to central London’s
rail network. An additional £1 billion has
been ring-fenced to fund the rolling stock.
Due to open by the end of 2018, the
project is currently running on time and on
budget.
Delivering direct connections to all the
major employment centres for the first
time, including Heathrow, Paddington, the
West End, the City and Canary Wharf, Crossrail
will bring more than a million people to within
45 minutes of these centres. At its peak, between
Paddington and Whitechapel, 24 trains per hour will
run, each capable of carrying 1,500 passengers.
Crossrail will make travelling in London and the South
East easier and quicker, and help to reduce crowding on
London’s transport network. At this stage, transport experts
estimate that 200 million passengers will use Crossrail
services on an annual basis and expect that many of these
will move from road transport to the more environmentally
sustainable railways.
This project will bring an estimated £42 billion worth of
benefit to London and UK economy through regeneration
and investment, including over site developments at all of
the new stations in the central section.
“Europe’s largest infrastructure project, Crossrail already
delivers thousands of jobs and business opportunities
to companies of all sizes. Well over ten thousand people
are currently employed directly by Crossrail, in addition
to thousands more through the extended supply chain
which reaches well beyond London. In fact, more than 65
per cent of the project’s supply chain is outside the Capital,
more than 50 per cent are SMEs, and 97 per cent are UK
companies,” said Steve Hails, Crossrail’s Health & Safety
Director.
While project funding is split into hundreds of primary
contracts (and more than 75,000 sub-contracts), with
Crossrail in the position of client to major contractors with
health and safety programs of their own, Hails also handles
a budget in excess of £1 million for general improvements
alone.
“As a client, Crossrail expects all contractors
to apportion an appropriate amount towards
management of health and safety and meet
expectations in accordance with the contract.
Bidders must bid for new contracts through
the Crossrail procurement process and
the bid must include an outline of how the
pre-defined health and safety expectations
will be met, although we do not ask for a
breakdown of costs,” explains Hails.
H
ails joined Crossrail in April 2012,
taking over from the previous Health
& Safety Director. “My team and I are
now responsible for monitoring performance to ensure
contractors deliver against the agreed criteria. We have
a ‘Target Zero’ branded philosophy with three distinct
principles,” he said.
Safety is Crossrail’s number one value. The company
believes that Target Zero is a state of mind, and key to
ensuring a world class Health and Safety standard across
the programme, protecting the work environment and
“Due to open by the
end of 2018, the project
is currently running on
time and on budget”
HSE INTERNATIONAL
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