Developers have recently submitted plans for an exciting new revamp of the area that surrounds the Tottenham Court Road Crossrail station in London. Back in 2009, to make room for the Crossrail development of Tottenham Court Road station, the iconic Astoria theatre was demolished. However, plans for a new 350-seat theatre, shops, offices, and flats have been submitted to Westminster Borough Council.

Tottenham Court Road Crossrail station will play an important part in the new Crossrail high speed rail network as travellers will be able to pass to and from the tube lines and Crossrail trains at Tottenham Court Road. To this end, Tottenham Court Station is currently being expanding to make way for Crossrail facilities.

As part of this expansion work, developers are now hoping to revamp the area surrounding the station. These plans include a new theatre to replace the old Astoria, plus four new blocks of offices, flats and shops at various points in the vicinity of Tottenham Court Crossrail station.

One nine-storey block will be constructed above the station itself, and will include nine floors of office units and three floors of shops. A further block will be built on Charing Cross road and will be comprised of offices, flats, and shops, plus the new theatre. Another two blocks are also planned for development on Dean Street and Oxford Street, and will include flats and shops.

Work on Crossrail is moving forward quickly and work on the tunnelling phase of the Crossrail project will begin next spring when TBMs move in and start excavating beneath the city of London. The high speed Crossrail network should be ready for its first passengers in 2018 and commuters will be able to travel from Maidenhead and Brentwood across central London to Abbey Wood.

Sources from Transport for London have expressed concern that the government’s proposed plans for Crossrail to secure funding from private funding initiatives (PFI contracts), could cost UK taxpayers a lot more in the long term.

Crossrail intends to use private funding initiatives to purchase new rolling stock, but the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, believes that the necessary funding should come from the state as opposed to private investors. Boris’s views were recently made public in a confidential memo from Transport for London officials, a memo based on Transport for London’s experiences with private finding initiatives during the London tube upgrades.

Following agreements made with the Department of Transport in the wake of the public spending review last year, Transport for London are not allowed to borrow more than a set amount from the government. However, Boris Johnson is hoping to persuade the Treasury department and government to give Crossrail the go-ahead to borrow the necessary funds from the state to buy Crossrail carriages instead of relying on private funding initiatives.

According to a report issued by the Treasury department, the main reason for argument is the “…significant widening of the gap between the cost of finance under a private-financed concession compared with the public sectors…”

As such, Boris Johnson and Transport for London are arguing that borrowing money from the state to help fund Crossrail carriage purchases will be significantly cheaper than borrowing the funds from private investors since PFI contracts could easily add a 70% premium to the cost of the Crossrail projects in the pipeline, which is clearly not good value for Crossrail or the British taxpayer.

Boris is confident that as long as public procurement is handled sensibly, Crossrail will reap the benefits. There has also been suggestion by some industry insiders that the last UK train factory, Bombardier, would also benefit from access to public funding.

The Costain-Skanska joint venture partnership were awarded the Crossrail Royal Oak civils contract back in 2010, and now, almost one month ahead of schedule, the Royal Oak portal has been handed over to Crossrail.

There have been many problems for the Skanska-Costain project team to deal with whilst working on the Crossrail Royal Oak site. During the site excavation, live electrical cables and other utilities were never very far away and the workers were often very close to live rail and tube lines. There are also several bridges and tunnels in close proximity to the Royal Oak site, and as the Costain-Skanska project manager recently commented, “We were no more than three metres away from the Hammersmith & City line on one side and the A40 on the other, with three bridges overhanging at the side, so space was extremely tight.”

Despite the exceptionally challenging conditions at the Royal Oak portal construction site, Costain-Skanska are very proud to have completed their work ahead of schedule. The first Crossrail portal to have reached completion was a massively complex undertaking for the contractor as more than twenty five thousands cubic metres of soil needed to be excavated in order to create steel ring supported openings large enough for the giant tunnel boring machines to access next year. With the A40 to the north and several major rail and tube lines to the south, building the Crossrail portal has been something of a logistical nightmare.

The first stage of construction of the Crossrail tunnels is due to begin next spring. Tunnel boring machines will begin their task at the Royal Oak portal and from there major tunnelling work will commence.

Crossrail Royal Oak is the first of the Crossrail portals to reach completion. Trains will transition from Royal Oak into and out of the London Crossrail network. The next Crossrail portal, Pudding Lane, will be completed in 2012.

The Royal Oak tunnel portal is the first of the Crossrail sites to have reached completion, which is nicely ahead of schedule. Of course it was important that there were no costly delays in construction work on the Royal Oak site as this portal will be providing access for the first tunnel boring machines, which are due to be launched in Spring of next year.

Work commenced at the Crossrail Royal Oak portal in January 2010 and completion represents an important milestone for the Crossrail project, and in recognition of this fact, Ailie MacAdam, the Central Section Delivery Director for Crossrail, recently commented that the completion of Royal Oak was the project’s “first tunnelling milestone”. During the course of the excavation work on the Royal Oak site, a massive amount of soil was removed—more than 25,000 cubic metres—but the majority of this has been recycled for use in other constructions sites around the city of London.

The tunnelling component is easily the most complex part of the Crossrail project and tunnelling work will commence in Spring 2012 with several tunnel boring machines arriving on the Royal Oak portal site from Germany, although some further preparatory work will be required before the actuall tunnelling commences next year. If tunnelling work progresses according to schedule, the tunnelling works will have reached completion by Autumn of 2014, by which time more than 21km of tunnels will have been excavated.

As well as the Crossrail Royal Oak tunnel portal, there are other Crossrail tunnel portals under construction. Preparatory building work has already begun on Crossrail Plumstead portal and North Woolwich sites and construction work is well underway at the Pudding Lane Crossrail tunnel portal. The other tunnel portal is at Victoria Dock, but construction work will not start there until later on next year.

Crossrail have announced that they are now looking for interested parties to express an interest in bidding for the lucrative C630 Tunnel Mechanical & Engineering Systems Contract for fit-out works on the tunnelling network. Crossrail tunnelling work is due to begin in Spring 2012 and the first inaugural tunnel boring machine will be launched from the Crossrail Royal Oak portal.

Andy Mitchell, Crossrail program director, made the following statement: “As the new Crossrail tunnels are completed, work will get underway to fit the tunnels out with the necessary track and overhead power equipment to enable the railway to operate. Such is the scale and complexity of the task it will take several years to complete the fit-out works with people working around the clock to complete the job.”

Crossrail expect to award the C630 M&E Contract towards the end of next year, which will give the successful contractor plenty of time to plan for the work to begin in 2014. Fit-out work will commence once Crossrail tunnel construction has almost reached completion, but although the tunnelling is a Herculean task in itself, the fit out works are just as complicated.

Each completed Crossrail tunnel will require a great deal of equipment before it can be used to transport the Crossrail trains. Around 40km of track will need to be laid through each of the tunnels. The Crossrail tunnels will also need electricity conductor rails, ventilation systems, and drainage. In total, each of the Crossrail tunnels will need 30km of fire mains, 40km of walkways to provide access to Crossrail engineers, fifty ventilation fans, lighting throughout, and of course track.

M&E fit-out work will be required across the entire Crossrail tunnel network and in order to complete the works in as short a time as possible, the M&E works will need to be started simultaneously from the Plumstead and Royal Oak Crossrail portals.

Crossrail senior managers have been working very hard over the last few months in an attempt to bring the Crossrail budget down from the original figure of more than £17 billion, to a far more palatable £14 billion, and according to Andy Mitchell, programme director at Crossrail, all this hard work has been very successful.

Crossrail was originally projected to cost around £17 billion, but following the government’s comprehensive spending review, the completion date for the project was moved back in order to save money and other costs savings measures were implemented by Crossrail, including a value cost savings initiative. Thanks to cost savings exercises such as the Optimised Contractor Involvement Initiative, Crossrail has managed to reduce the overall cost of the project to £14 billion.

When Andy Mitchell spoke at a meeting of the British Tunnelling Society last night, he said, “We have been able to refine ideas and take up proposals from unsuccessful tenders to deliver £50M of cost reductions already.”

Theresa Villiers, Transport Minister, confirmed this figure in July, when she said that the government were very happy with the fact Crossrail was now expected to cost no more than £14.5 billion by the time it reaches completion. She further commented, “Forecasts continue to suggest that Crossrail will be delivered within its existing funding.”

Crossrail tunnelling construction work is progressing nicely and the first Crossrail tunnel boring machine will be delivered on to site in December and tunnel boring work is expected to begin next March at the Crossrail Paddington site. However, programme director, Andy Mitchell, is keeping a very close eye on how Crossrail works are progressing and all contractors are being put through rigorous checks before being allowed on to site. “No one is going to open up a big hole in London without me knowing all about it,” he said recently.

Although Crossrail and the government has always stated a preference for UK bidders on Crossrail contracts, it appears that a German based company—Siemens—is the preferred bidder for the lucrative £1 billion Crossrail train fleet contract.

A recent announcement from Crossrail has indicated that Siemens is currently at the top of the list for the Crossrail train fleet contract after being named as the preferred bidder on the £1.4 billion Thameslink contract. The other listed bidders include Japanese company, Hitachi, plus CAF from Spain and Bombardier, a Canadian group.

The decision to name Siemens as the preferred bidder on the Thameslink contract has sparked a great deal of political controversy since manufacturing of rolling stock will take place in Krefeld, Germany, which puts the future of Britain’s last train factory at Derby into serious question, although some of the train components will still be manufactured in the UK.

In the wake of this controversy, the Siemens group has gone to great lengths to point out that its status of preferred bidder on the Thameslink contract has come about as a result of the group fulfilling all of the stringent criteria for the final contract award. Despite this, the government has still been forced to justify the Thameslink and Crossrail decision to make Siemens the preferred bidder and ministers have firmly stated that UK firms bidding on future train contracts will be given special consideration before any final contract award is made.

Siemens have historically has a long presence in the UK, but if the final Crossrail train contract is awarded to them, the future of the Bombardier plant in Derby is very much in doubt. However, the Crossrail train fleet contract is unlikely to be awarded until 2014 as the government is still ruminating over the results of a recent procurement review.

As the complaints and disputes between disgruntled local traders and residents living amongst the Crossrail construction sites in the West End of London rumbles on, Terry Morgan, chairman of Crossrail, has agreed to come and meet the small businesses who have been affected by the ongoing work on the £16 billion Crossrail high speed rail scheme scheduled to open in 2018.

Many of the most urgent concerns voiced by small traders and local residents were raised at a recent Westminster council meeting of the built environment and scrutiny committee. It was here that several of those affected discussed how unhappy they were with the quality of the signage and lighting provided by Crossrail as construction work continues on the massive rail project.

The business continuity signs are supposed to ensure local businesses do not miss out on any potential passing trade while work on the various Crossrail sites continues, but a large number of the local traders in the Westminster area have slammed Crossrail for transforming large sections of the borough into narrow alleyways hemmed in by large hoardings.

Many of the local traders have complained that their businesses have been negatively affected by the ongoing work on Crossrail and although a Crossrail representative was present at the Westminster council built environment and scrutiny committee meeting, he said the complaints raised were beyond his remit, which drew a storm of criticism from the local councillors, traders and residents.

However, in an attempt to pour oil on troubled waters, Crossrail has now agreed to provide new and improved signage to let the passing public know all local businesses are still open for business and Crossrail chairman Terry Morgan and Crossrail programme director Andy Mitchell will be meeting with councillor Angela Harvey very soon.

As work on the massive Crossrail high speed rail project moves inexorably forward, small businesses and local residents in the Westminster area of London are beginning to grumble over the problems they are facing. In view of the scale of the Crossrail project, it is hardly surprising that there has been a big knock-on effect on residents and small traders, but Andrew Cave, a representative of the Federation of Small Businesses, is concerned that Crossrail is not doing enough to help small businesses in the Westminster area. Mr Cave says Crossrail leaders should be making more of “a commitment to offering businesses the market rate for their properties”.

There have been an increasing number of complaints recently about the disruption and chaos caused by Crossrail construction works in central London and many small businesses claim that their trade has been negatively affected by traffic confusion and protective hoardings placed outside office buildings and shops. Other small businesses have also faced large hikes in their business rates and rents as a result of the Crossrail project.

In order to move forward with construction work on Crossrail, a large number of businesses and residents have been affected by compulsory purchase orders and several people have complained that they feel their properties have been unfairly valued. However, Crossrail is adamant that it is sensitive to the needs of small traders. Crossrail also insists that it always tries to come to a fair agreement over the issue of compulsory purchase orders.

In response to the recent influx of complaints, Westminster built environment and scrutiny committee have invited Terry Morgan, chairman of Crossrail, to visit the Westminster borough in order for him to gain a greater level of insight into the effect Crossrail construction work is having on the local area.

As Crossrail ploughs on with its construction schedule in central London, not everybody is happy about the state of affairs. Many residents and small businesses in the borough of Westminster have voiced complaints to the council and these complaints were put forward at a meeting of Westminster’s Scrutiny Committee, to which a representative of Crossrail had been invited.

The complaints about Crossrail mostly centred on the level of disruption caused by the works taking place in Westminster. Many residents are unhappy about noise caused by late night working and some local businesses have seen a decline in their trade because of traffic disruption in the area. There were also complaints about incorrect signage and large numbers of hoardings around sites, which has been seen as a contributory factor in the rise of anti-social behaviour in the local area.

Unfortunately, although a representative was present at the meeting of the Scrutiny Committee, they were unable to deal with the complaints to a satisfactory standard and a letter was written to the Crossrail chairman, Terry Morgan.

The response from Crossrail was: “Crossrail is very sensitive to the concerns of local residents and businesses in the West End and is working closely with the local community to resolve issues and reach fair agreements. It is absolutely critical that the impact of Crossrail’s construction on central London is kept to a minimum.

“We recognise that more needs to be done to assist local traders promote businesses that are situated close to our worksite with new and improved signage and this process is already underway. We are working hard to ensure that any outstanding compensation is paid as soon as possible.

“Crossrail is committed to being a good neighbour, to communicating openly with residents and local business and to addressing concerns in a prompt manner.”