Crossrail Telecoms Solutions

Crossrail runs from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through 42km of new tunnels under London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. The new railway, which will be known as the Elizabeth line when services begin through central London, will be fully integrated with London’s existing transport network and will be operated by Transport for London.

The Elizabeth line will serve 41 stations. Ten new stations form the backbone of the project. L.B. Foster has worked with a variety of Tier 1 contractors on all 10 stations, including Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Custom House, Woolwich and Abbey Wood. At its peak, we had a team of almost 500 people working across the project.

Our principal contractor partners at each station:

• Paddington - SRW (part of the Skanska Group of companies)
• Bond Street - CSJV (Costain Skanska Joint Venture)
• Tottenham Court Road - Laing O’Rouke
• Farringdon - NG Bailey
• Liverpool Street - Laing O’Rourke
• Whitechapel - BBMV (Balfour Beatty,
• Morgan Sindall, VINCI Construction joint venture)
• Custom House - Laing O’ Rourke
• Abbey Wood - Balfour Beatty

The scope of telecommunications and safety works required at each of the ten new Crossrail stations was varied but included a combination of our integrated telecoms and safety solutions:

• Design capability
• Project management
• SISS
• BMS
• PAVA
• CCTV
• Radio systems for staff and emergency services
• Cabling
• Bracketry
• CIS
• DOO
• Help points
• Media screens

The Crossrail Act 2008 was given royal assent in July 2008. Working on such a large and complex project demanded exceptional planning and logistics coordination, as well as a large pool of skilled and flexible resource on which to draw as required and at different locations across the capital. Designs, project management and resource planning were coordinated from our city offices in Moorgate, close to the Crossrail project itself, as well as from our Cheshunt facilities in Hertfordshire.

Daily, weekly and monthly project meetings with each of our tier 1 contractor partners enabled changes to designs to be developed, configured and approved quickly as required with minimum disruption or delay to the overall project. Our positive ‘can do’ attitude to finding solutions helped us develop a reputation as the go-to fixers at each of the project sites.