Media centre

Monday 17 Oct 2005

BUILDING AWARD & PM APPROVAL FOR BATTERSEA BRIDGEWORK

Region & Route:

| Southern

A Network Rail bridge reconstruction project in Battersea picked up recognition right from the top last week after winning an award at the British Construction Industry (BCI) awards and being shortlisted for a Prime Minister’s prize. The scheme won the Small Civil Engineering Project Award at the BCI Awards and narrowly missed out on the Prime Minister’s Better Public Building award after reaching the shortlist. In awarding the project with its prize the BCI judges’ comments included: “Great teamwork and spirit”; “This was stunning - so much going on and so well planned and delivered”; and “A brilliant performance under pressure”. In being shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Better Public Building Award, the scheme was also described as “a first-class example of civil engineering under pressure”. Network Rail’s Chief Executive, John Armitt, said: “This award is richly deserved and is a tribute to the teamwork and efforts of all parties involved in this critical project. In railway terms this scheme faced every imaginable constraint – live railway lines, a tight schedule, a restricted working space, and one of the busiest stretches of railway in the world – so the successful delivery of this work was a tremendous achievement and deserves the highest recognition.” The £3 million pound project was completed in May 2004 and involved replacing ten individual sections on one of the country’s oldest railway bridges near Clapham Junction. The work is widely seen as one of the biggest and most complex railway structure schemes ever carried out in the southern region. The massive reconstruction project required some 18 months pre-planning involving Network Rail, designers Mott MacDonald and principal contractors Edmund Nuttall. Preparatory works were carried out on site over a series of weekends between December 2003 and May 2004. The bulk of the work was then carried out in a 101 hour possession of the railway which took place over the Easter weekend in April 2004. This crucial stage of the work involved replacing the decking on ten separate rail-over-rail bridge spans with the only two suitable rail cranes in the country brought in to tackle the mammoth task of lifting the new decking into place. The new decking also had to be specifically designed to fit the load capacity of the cranes. The project team were presented with their award at a prize ceremony held in London on Thursday 13 October.