Whitechapel on the move

Crossrail is among the most significant infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the UK. There will be 40 Crossrail stations, including 10 new stations at Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon, Liverpool Street, Whitechapel, Canary Wharf, Custom House, Woolwich and Abbey Wood. During Crossrail’s construction, an interim station at Whitechapel re-routes passengers out of the station. This is to ensure future engineering works take place in a safe environment, with minimal disruption to the existing Underground and Overground services. A temporary ticket hall and London Underground staff accommodation and Communications Equipment Room (CER) opened in January 2016 at the junction of Court Street and Durward Street. The ticket hall’s relocation enabled demolition of existing staff accommodation buildings containing the Station Supervisor’s Office / Ticket Hall / Ticket Machines (POMs ) / UTS Gate Line / Welfare / CER.

L.B. Foster Telecoms was contracted by BBMV, the Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall, VINCI Construction joint venture, which is delivering the Crossrail Whitechapel Main Station Works contract (C512), to install and commission the new temporary ticket hall. Our works included new Station Information & Safety System (SISS), head end and control equipment, duplicating existing functionality within the old Whitechapel station. Dave Cranston is a Project Manager at BBMV.

He says: “Technical issues faced by the team included the migration of existing CER to the new CER within the temporary ticket hall, testing and commissioning, over and back testing, periodic migration works during possessions, plus countless other issues. Suffice to say they were all met ‘head on’ and resolved by the team at L.B. Foster Telecoms. Dave adds “I have no hesitation in endorsing L.B. Foster for future works. Their professionalism, commitment, expertise in their field, ability to adapt as the project develops and most importantly to me, they have good people at all levels of the business representing them daily on the ‘front line’ with clients.”