Project 

The project is a new £1.1Bn extension to the London Underground rail network, the first extension of the 21st century.

Delivered under a collaborative D&B contract, the project includes 3km of new tunnel, two new stations, and two intervention and evacuation shafts. It connects the new regeneration area around Battersea Power Station to central London and has been a trigger for the redevelopment of the power station and the construction of 20,000 new homes and creation of 25,000 new jobs.

Project challenges and key drivers

The immediate challenge facing the project team, following contract award, was to resolve a major design interface between the new station Battersea and the over-station development (OSD), where the third-party developer had changed their proposals. 

This resulted in a 17-month delay to the project, whilst the station – which acts as the substructure to that OSD – was redesigned. The new design was developed collaboratively between TfL, a Joint Venture of Spanish Contractor Ferrovial and British Contractor Laing O’Rourke, and the developer. 

The developer and Contractor’s designers worked hand-in-hand. The re-design process led to TfL and the Contractor to recognise the benefits of working collaboratively and Adep management made some changes to the contract whereby financial penalties were replaced with incentives associated with a series of interim milestones. 

The fit-out, systems integration (particularly signalling, which were by French specialist Thales), testing and commissioning phases of the project were a huge challenge – these projects are often thought of as a civil engineering challenge but the real challenge is in bringing a functioning railway to life. At these stages of the project, there was a keen focus on the opening date and the generation of revenue for TfL. Finally, the COVID pandemic lead to a shut-down of the project at a key time, and recovery from that was a major challenge.

Award-worthy contribution, achievement, new technique or process - Adept Management

Adept Management was involved in the project from 6 months before contract award to the opening of the new extension, a total period of 71⁄2 years. Accordingly, our contribution varied over time, as the project passed through its lifecycle, and our achievements are varied. 

In the initial stages of the project, we implemented a system for measuring and reporting design progress, based on ‘rules of credit’ which allowed meaningful Earned Value reporting to be achieved. This also allowed the risks at each major design milestone to be understood, for example where a design was deemed to be co-ordinated but which has not had input from a system specialist. 

After a major design change had been implemented, we were instrumental in the design of a milestone-based incentivisation approach to delivering the project, incentivising the Contractor around 5 key milestones (such as Power On for commissioning; and start of Trial Operations) and tracking progress on the project via over a hundred hierarchical milestones identified as on or near to the critical path. 

We also identified and tracked interface milestones to ensure effective integration of signalling, communication systems, lift, escalator and gateline suppliers, and of railway testing and commissioning activities including dynamic testing and trial operations (which are led by TfL’s Operations team).

These co-ordination and integration activities could only benefit the project with effective collaboration and teamwork, and to that end we implemented a ‘Project Control Centre’. This was used to raise significant issues, identify actions, and review milestones. A programme of stand-up meetings was introduced, where issues and actions were raised jointly by TfL and Contractor Project Managers, ensuring joint ownership of the issues and of any resulting decisions. This proved especially effective at bringing alignment between the Spanish and British Project Management teams.

From the point of the design change, Adept Management’s controls allowed us to consistently report the opening date for the extension as June 2021, despite significant concerns about the achievability of the schedule from others. This forecast was only changed to September 2021 when COVID caused the project to shut down. Finally, in the summer of 2020, we were asked to determine the impact of COVID measures on site working methods and productivity. By assessing the measures which TfL were introducing, we were able to minimise the extent of the delay (to only one month in addition to the site shutdown). TfL have reported that the project was delivered £160m under budget, bringing its final total cost to £1.1bn.