Ailie MacAdam wears her responsibility well. As central section delivery director for Crossrail, she is tasked with overseeing the most difficult part of what is arguably the biggest construction and engineering project in the UK. Yet she doesn’t exhibit a trace of worry or concern.
In fact quite the opposite is true: MacAdam cannot hide her pride and excitement at being involved with Crossrail. For her the responsibility is viewed as an inspiring challenge. And approaching deadlines are embraced with a sense of anticipation. She offers a thoroughly refreshing approach to project management on the grandest of scales.
“It’s exciting, it’s challenging. I love working on projects that make a difference,” she says, sitting in her modest 28th-floor office in London’s Canary Wharf. “Crossrail will deliver a step-change to London’s transport system – it will bring an additional 10% rail capacity. It’s a high-profile project and it’s technically very complex – we are tunnelling under the capital and building several sub-surface stations in the middle of London. It’s just a terrific project to be involved with.”
MacAdam’s experience makes her the ideal choice to lead a project of this magnitude. After graduating in chemical engineering, and enjoying a successful career in the oil and gas sector, a family relocation to Boston, Massachusetts in the mid-1990s saw her switch to civil engineering with a management role for Bechtel on the city’s massive central artery tunnel project. She returned to the UK to project manage the refurbishment of London’s St Pancras Station and then oversaw the last six months of the high-speed rail link from London through Kent to the British end of the Channel Tunnel, taking it into operation in 2007.
It’s an impressive CV, no doubt. But working for Bechtel to deliver the central section of Crossrail is another step up: the project is herculean in its scope and complexity, running from Acton in the west of the city to Whitechapel in the east, via the construction of twin-bore 21km tunnels and six new subsurface stations in some of the most crowded parts of the capital, all interfacing with the existing rail network.
MacAdam’s job is to oversee the design, procurement and construction of all the new works, and installing the tracks and signalling for the new trains, eventually handing it over to the customer – primarily Transport for London and the Department for Transport – in 2018.
Much progress has already been made. MacAdam says that 80% of the design of the central section is now complete. Preparation has been made for the construction of the six stations, with demolition work well under way. Portal construction has commenced at two sites with diaphragm walls now in place. A tunnelling and underground construction academy has also been established as part of the national skills development side of the project. The new academy will be the only soft-ground tunnelling facility of its type in Europe and courses will start later this year.
Piling for the two-to-three storeys deep station boxes has also commenced, along with detailed planning on how the new stations align with existing Transport for London infrastructure such as the Tube. Furthermore, all of the main tunnelling contracts have now been awarded, with the tunnel-boring machines to be ordered by the contractors in the coming weeks. The main work on the tunnels will start in the first quarter of next year.
MacAdam says the progress to date has been achieved in some of the most congested parts of the capital. That has required an immense amount of planning and project management. “For example,” she says, “when we are digging big holes for the new stations we have needed to make sure that all the utilities that criss-cross London are moved out of the way. That has meant an awful lot of realignment.
“When we start going through with the tunnelling there are also certain ground movements that could potentially have an impact on utilities such as water and gas lines. So we have gone through a thorough assessment with the utilities firms, working out what kind of protection is required and when the things have to be moved. That’s been an immense task.”
Archaeology has also been a major consideration. Crossrail employs a specialist contractor to assess underground conditions before it progresses with its excavations. The project has just discovered an old burial ground on a site near Liverpool Street where the remains of up to 1,000 skeletons are thought to exist. “That’s a different element to the project that people don’t think about,” says MacAdam. “There’s also asbestos identification, noise mitigation, and the need to install sophisticated instrumentation for the monitoring of the tunnelling. There’s a lot of different aspects to the work.”
Much effort has gone into what MacAdam calls “value engineering” throughout the project. Engineering and construction experts from around the world have been used to peer review much of the design work to ensure that value for money has been achieved and that timeframes are realistic. This approach saved £30 million on the design of Whitechapel Station alone.
She says: “The initial design at Whitechapel was a station on top of existing London Underground lines, and that involved an enormous amount of interface work. What we did was realign it to make it a lot less complicated, changing the entrance, and streamlining the design. We managed to avoid tunnelling under some tricky structures. We give the whole thing a good shake to mitigate risk and lower the direct costs.”
With such a multi-faceted project, ensuring that costs are controlled and schedules are met are crucial areas of MacAdam’s responsibility. It’s a daunting challenge, especially when you consider the sheer number of individual work packages. She keeps on top of it all by employing a logical approach to project management, breaking the work down into increasingly smaller chunks.
So at the top line is the requirement to build the central section of Crossrail. This is split in geographical regions, and then cut down further into specific sections, then stations, then ticket halls, and finally into utility works, piling and mechanical engineering. “We call it a work breakdown structure,” she says. “We have worked to get a thorough understanding of the work structure, knowing where every little bit fits in the puzzle. It’s crucial to know how much budget you have for that particular piece of work and how much time there is in the programme for it, and then you measure how you are performing against it. As long as we have our work breakdown structure consistent, then we are confident that we are collecting our costs. And that at the end of the day means a well-controlled project.”
That hasn’t always been the experience on other major infrastructure projects in the UK. The extension of the London Underground Jubilee line ran horribly late and over budget, and the upgrade to the West Coast Main Line suffered a similar fate. But MacAdam is confident that Crossrail won’t suffer from similar problems. “My ethos is that you have to plan, plan, plan,” she says. “Also what helps is the people we have on this project – it’s a unified team with world-class people and companies. There is a lot of experience brought from other projects such as the Jubilee line and High Speed One. There is an atmosphere of understanding those lessons from previous projects and nailing what we are doing here.”
The project now has a real feeling of momentum about it.
The last remaining tunnel contracts were awarded at the beginning of April, with the first tunnel-boring machine set to start out on its journey in spring 2012. In total, combined tunnelling contracts worth in the region of £1.5 billion have now been issued.
Also, a contract notice for the central section signalling system worth £75 million was placed in the Official Journal of the European Union seeking expressions of interest at the end of last month. Crossrail will operate a high-frequency service of up to 24 trains an hour during the peak between Whitechapel and Paddington through the tunnels under central London and must also be capable of enhancement to 30 trains an hour through the central section at a later date.
The shortlists of bidders for four of the central London stations – Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Liverpool Street and Whitechapel stations – have also now been drawn up. The total combined value of the four main construction contracts for these stations is nearly £1 billion. The shortlists for the two other central London stations, Paddington and Farringdon, were announced at the start of 2011.
“The project is now unstoppable,” claims MacAdam. “We have spent a lot of time and effort preparing for tunnelling by assessing the geology and making sure the specifications were right for the tunnel-boring machines. The geology is very varied: under the Thames is one kind of ground condition, but underneath Farringdon is totally different. So we have been drilling a lot of boreholes across the capital, and that has provided us with some valuable information.”
The key to the project looking forward, says MacAdam, is ensuring that the supply chain remains fully engaged and that the work packages remain aligned. She says that there is a real feeling of teamwork on the project, with the main contractors and their suppliers having regular progress meetings. “It’s not a case of us telling the contractors ‘you will do this or that’,” she says. “It’s about sitting around the table with them and working as a team.”
The central section won’t be handed over to Transport for London until 2018. MacAdam’s work goes as far forward as the testing of the new rolling stock, so handing over a fully commissioned piece of infrastructure.
There have been complaints that Crossrail is causing and will continue to cause enormous disruption to life in London, with demolition works taking place in heavily congested parts of the capital and tunnelling producing large amounts of rubble that will have to be transported away. But MacAdam insists that the disruption will be worthwhile.
“Crossrail will bring an additional 10% rail capacity to London,” she says. “It will mean an extra 1.5 million people being within 45 minutes of London. It has been designed to connect with all the existing infrastructure. And it will revitalise many areas. It will be a world-class railway.”
Achieving a decent work/life balance
Having a husband and two children as well as a high-profile job as central section delivery director for Crossrail, it can be a tricky proposition for Ailie MacAdam to achieve a decent work/life balance. But her husband is also an engineer, and therefore understands the pressures the job brings.
“I couldn’t do this job without my husband being incredibly supportive,” she says. “I do work hard, but it’s not crazy hours. It’s very focused work when I am here. But when I get home then ‘mum is mum’. I find that is a real benefit.”
Once Crossrail has been delivered, MacAdam says she will probably use Bechtel’s global reach to work on another large-scale infrastructure project. “My next move could be anywhere in the world,” she says. “It won’t unfold until I’m about to come off this project. It doesn’t have to be a railway – Bechtel does all sorts of infrastructure including bridges, airports, roads, oil and gas, mining and metals.”
Wouldn’t a quieter life suit? “Maybe,” she says with a smile. “I often think that perhaps I should just go and sit on a beach. But then when it comes to it I think I’d get bored.”
Green light despite global downturn
Crossrail has been a long time coming. The £15.9 billion project has been mooted for decades, but a series of funding shortfalls saw it remaining on the drawing board for a long time. However, in 2008, despite the global economic downturn, Transport for London and the Department for Transport committed to the project, having won backing from Network Rail, BAA and the City of London, among others. Construction finally began on 15 May 2009.
The railway will run from Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east via new twin tunnels under central London. It will link Heathrow Airport, the West End, the City of London and Canary Wharf.
At least 24 trains an hour will run in peak times in each direction and this is likely to be increased to 30 trains an hour a few years later. Once built, Crossrail will be the single largest addition to the railway network in the South East for more than 50 years.