Project Management & Assurance

GHD provided project management support to the Rail for London maintenance team in readiness for undertaking the role as Infrastructure Manager for the reconstructed and extended East London Line. This role was extended to include management of capital expenditure works during the first year of operation, and further extended to include the management of design to GRIP 5 for station enhancements to the Grade 2 Listed Crystal Palace.

We were responsible for managing specific work streams required to be in place for RfL to carry out their legal responsibilities as Infrastructure Manager on the newly constructed East London Line. These works streams included the preparation of operational and maintenance processes and procedures. Our role was extended after commencement of the train services to include the management of capital expenditure works for both rail and non rail related elements of the East London Line. These works were procured via the Infrastructure Maintenance Contractor and included elements as diverse as the installation of pigeon proofing measures to the safe demolition of an old London Underground depot bounded on all sides by live railway lines. Following a successful first year of railway operations, the project management brief was extended to include the management of the design from GRIP4 to GRIP 5 for station enhancement works at the grade 2 listed building at Crystal Palace, one of the southern termini of the East London Line. These works consisted of bringing back into use the Victorian ticket hall, installation of three lifts and associated high level walkways and a lightweight ETFE canopy over five platforms, together with associated improvements in customer information systems.

As Programme Manager for the £40m per annum Capital Projects portfolio on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), GHD has supplied two senior resources; one to undertake the Interim Programme Manager role itself and the other as Senior Planner. The portfolio currently includes around 20 projects that are identified as Olympic Projects, vital for the provision of the revised intensive timetable that will be in place for the London 2012 Olympics.

The Programme Manager is responsible for managing the full life cycle of projects entering the capital projects portfolio. Reporting to the Programme Manager are five project managers, a commercial manager, a senior planner and an assurance manager. Other resources are shared from within the programme office. The nature of the projects is wide-ranging, from station infrastructure such as buildings, M&E services, retail, lifts and escalators, to vehicles, network-wide engineering systems such as customer information, CCTV and PA, together with traction and LV power.

The review involved the re-stating of terms for the 2nd review period of the PPP Contracts, reviewing the contract in light of events in the first review period and producing a new set of restated terms for the Infracos to price against for the 2nd 7½ year review period.

The other aspects of the Periodic Review programme concerned the development of London Underground’s preferred engineering strategies and the subsequent viability of the financial modelling arising from this engineering strategy outputs.

GHD’s role involved the management of both London Underground and external advisor teams in the following key areas of the Programme: -

• Budget development and tracking
• Procurement (development of briefs, cost estimations, adherence and interfacing with the Procurement Department and bid evaluation)
• Programme governance and branding (meeting structure cycles and presentation of Agendas and Minutes)
• Reporting structure (formats, frequency, alignment to meetings, governance)
• Communication (development of presentations, presenting to wider stakeholders and issuing regular briefing notes)
• Scheduling (development and reporting of master schedule delivery and progress against milestones)

National Express East Anglia (NXEA) had developed a Proposal to introduce additional capacity across its network to meet the Government's capacity targets set out in its White Paper "Delivering a Sustainable Railway" published in July 2007. The Proposal is designed to meet the capacity targets through a mixture of new services and strengthening of existing ones.

This is a third party scheme to introduce new rolling stock onto Network Rail’s infrastructure, replacing current stock (317s), mainly on the Anglia route. The scheme is funded by DfT and managed on behalf of DfT by NXEA. NXEA had requested that Network Rail provide an indicative estimate for route clearance of new (Class 377/2) and cascaded rolling stock (Class 360) on to the Anglia route.