Keeping up the pace of rapid progress of recent months, Crossrail has appointed a new chief executive, the shortlist has been made for the Project Delivery Partner and preparatory work for the US$23.3bn (£15.9bn) project have commenced in central London.
Rob Holden, presently chief executive of London & Continental Railways (LCR) has been appointed to that same role with Cross London Rail Links Ltd (CLRL) with effect from 1 April. CLRL is developing the east-west rail link through the capital, and which calls for excavation of a total of 41.5km of 6m i.d. twin tube tunnels. Services are to start from 2017.
Crossrail’s executive chairman, Douglas Oakervee, becomes interim non-executive chairman when Holden joins. Oakervee has led the project in early development to Parliamentary hearings and achieved Royal Assent last July, and praised Holden’s ‘exceptional’ experience on major projects, including High Speed One.
The new non-executive was previously announced as Terry Morgan, chief executive of Tube Lines, who is to take up the role from November. CLRL is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL).
Last month, CLRL shortlisted four parties in the procurement of the Project Delivery Partner, which is to help the client deliver to standards, time and budget, and also provide supplementary suitable personnel to the core CLRL team.
The four parties are: Bechtel; Legacy 3 (a JV of Parsons Brinckerhoff, Balfour Beatty Management and Davis Langdon Programme Management); Laing O’Rourke Holdings; and a JV of Capita Symonds and Northcroft. The party that did not make the shortlist was Flare – a JV of Fluor, Ove Arup and EC Harris.
The deadline for tenders to be submitted by the shortlisted firms was 30 January.
The first two of the shortlisted parties have also been shortlisted for the Programme Partner contract, the other being Transcend – a JV of AECOM, CH2M Hill United Kingdom Unlimited and Nichols Group. CLRL said a decision was expected shortly.
At the close of last year a dozen consultants were awarded Design Framework Agreements to bid for design packages. The agreements last for the entire project. The 12 companies are: Aedas Group; Atkins; BDP; Capita Symonds; Halcrow; Hyder Consulting (UK); Jacobs Engineering UK; Mott MacDonald; Ove Arup; Parsons Brinckerhoff; Scott Wilson Railways; and, WSP UK.
Preparatory works for Crossrail commenced last month, at Tottenham Court Road tube station in the West End of London. Main construction activities are programmed to start next year. CLRL plans to use Optimised Contractor Involvement (OCI) in the procurement process for the main construction contracts (T&TI, January, p10).
DHL ExCel Supply Chain has been hired to study logistics options to minimise the disruption to the capital from the string of work sites, equipment and materials movements cutting across the heart of the city.
With most of the funding for the project coming from Government, there is also a parallel procurement activity by the Department for Transport to perform project oversight.
Shortlisted parties are: Arcadis AYH; Atkins; Booz & Co with support from Aecom/Turner & Townsend; Jacobs Engineering UK with support from KPMG; Mott MacDonald with support from Ernst & Young/FirstCo; Nichols Group-Nicholas Arup JV with support from First Class Partnerships/ NTTX; Parsons Brinckerhoff with support from Davis Langdon; Parsons Group International with support from Gardiner & Theobald; and, Praxis High Integrity Systems.
