A £5 million phase of the £300 million upgrade of Bond Street Station has won a place on the short list of the ICE London Civil Engineering Awards.
Director of ICE London, Miranda Housden, said: “The ICE London Awards are considered to be the most prestigious engineering awards in the capital, demonstrating innovation, creativity and social value whilst embedding a safety and sustainability culture. Shortlisted projects must be excellent in design, construction, project management, financial control, infrastructure maintenance or network operation.”
London Underground’s senior project manager, Andrew Grant, said, “The team are delighted to be nominated for this prestigious Award. The Bond Street Station Upgrade will provide a new entrance to this key interchange in the heart of London’s West End, together with much enhanced capacity and step free access to all platforms, ahead of the arrival of Crossrail services in a few years time. This innovative work involves a new reinforced concrete ticket hall structure constructed below a 1774 Grade 2 listed building, achieved with minimal disruption to the fabric of the building above street level.
“The new ticket hall, twice the depth of the original basement, was constructed using the “Pynford” stooling technique by specialist contractor Abbey Pynford. This enables a top down construction, whereby the original load path throughout the heritage structure is passed to a heavily reinforced slab.”
“Designed to minimise movement and to preserve the original heritage features, this slab was temporarily supported on numerous temporary props until the permanent supports were complete,” said Costain Laing O’Rourke JV Project Director Steve Nuttall.
“We are delighted that our project has reached the shortlist of the ICE London Civil Engineering Awards. We are very proud of the progress to date at this station and the benefits it will bring to the London Underground system as it celebrates its 150th anniversary. Engineering challenges include the top-down construction of a ticket hall structure replacing the basement of a listed building constructed in the 1770s. The fine heritage features of the building have been carefully protected throughout the construction process.
“Our site footprint is extremely restricted, so “just in time” deliveries and computer controlled vehicle movements to our Marylebone Lane entrance prevents increased traffic to Oxford Street, minimising disruption to the public and neighbouring properties.“
The Judging Panel will visit all the shortlisted schemes in February, chaired by Rod Macdonald, UK Director of TSE-n Metro UK and founding partner and former chairman of Buro Happold. Judges include the Deputy Mayor of London, Cllr Victoria Borwick AM, and Executive Director of Laing O’Rourke, Howard Shiplee CBE.
The award winners will be announced on the evening of Thursday 14 March by BBC London presenter Alice Bhandhukravi.
For more information on the ICE London Civil Engineering Awards 2013 can be found at www.ice.org.uk/londonawards.
ICE London has more than 8,000 members living and working in the city. More information can be found at www.ice.org.uk/London. You can follow ICE London on Twitter: @ICE_London