Introduction

Farringdon station will be one of the busiest in the UK when it opens in 2018, connecting with Thameslink and the London Underground to provide links with outer London, the home counties, the City, Canary Wharf and three of London’s five airports.

Millions of passengers passing through the new Farringdon station on the Elizabeth line will benefit from new, fully integrated station communications systems installed by L.B. Foster Telecoms.

Overarching design of C660 communications and control systems for the central section of the new Elizabeth line was awarded by the Crossrail project to Siemens PLC. Our engineers subsequently developed and fine-tuned designs specific to the operational requirements at Farringdon station, installing state-of-the-art station communications systems on behalf of contractor NG Bailey.

Requirement

L.B. Foster Telecoms was contracted by NG Bailey on behalf of Siemens and Crossrail Limited to install, enable, test and commission the new C660 communications and SCADA works at Farringdon station.

Details of the required test criteria for the commissioning of the design elements included testing, as applicable:

New Asset Register
Materials Compliance Records (MCR)
Inspection and Test plans (ITP)
Mandatory Asset Information Data (MAID).

Specification

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)
EN54-16 compliant Public Address (PAVA)
Passenger Help points (PHP)
Telephone Systems
Master & Slave Clocks
Station Radio (PMR)
Fibre network (CDN)
SCADA network
Hardware (Racks)
Customer Interface systems (CIS)
DOO CCTV.

Our solution

We worked closely with NG Bailey, Crossrail, Siemens and BAM, Ferrovial, Kier (BFK), the joint venture which built the two railway tunnels that run between the Royal Oak Portal and the new Farringdon Crossrail station. Our expert team drew on its experience of working on similar schemes in the rail sector to produce informed station communications solutions for the new Farringdon station. We challenged the scope of the project, attending and generating discussions with all project contractors. Our innovative engineering solutions delivered right-first-time solutions. Once commissioned, our station communications systems interfaced seamlessly with London Underground Limited’s existing PAVA/CCTV and data communications equipment, and associated demarcation point junction boxes. This affected a smooth and timely handover to project engineers from Siemens.

The team at L.B. Foster Telecoms was instrumental in the successful delivery of the project. They have been completely open and involved in the daily challenges encountered on a project of this size, from our initial contact pre-contract with the senior management all the way through to project completion.