Crossrail/Elizabeth Line. From construction to operation - ongoing discussion

[whole diary]

[Oxonhutch]

Wow! That's even worse than the London Reconnection's latest assessment.

[ellendune]

If you think it looks bad though: Think of Berlin Brandenburg Airport

[Electric train]

Its not looking very good.....and appologies, its avery long read.....

Just posted on New Civil Engineer website

True scale of Crossrail problems laid bare


The full scale of Crossrail’s problems have been laid bare with stations now revealed to be at the centre of ‘‘three more years’’ of work needed to open the catastrophically delayed metro.

 

This is truly a said state of affairs. 

Way back in early 2015 a senior member of the Thameslink Program left NR^» (Network Rail - home page) to oversee the Crossrail tunel fit out; I can clearly remember him going through the outline program with me as I was nearing completion of a relitvly simple Canal Tunnels project, I did mention to him what he had outlines was optomistic but he was convinced that they had all the construction equipment, supplies and staff all lined up and trained.

The fit out and then systems testing, commissioning and finally intigration testing and shakedown always take longer than project directors plan for

[broadgage]

Presumably the "Autumn 2020" opening is now in doubt ?

[SandTEngineer]

Presumably the "Autumn 2020" opening is now in doubt ?

Well it does say three years in that report, so even being optomistic I think we might be looking at early 2022......

[Surrey 455]

If you think it looks bad though: Think of Berlin Brandenburg Airport

Yes. After all these years of me using Schönefeld, I can't believe I am still having to use it. It was supposed to have been shut down many years ago.
I don't like the food offerings. I want more than Burger King. Other German airports give much more choice.

[eightonedee]

Well at least someone appears to be better at coming forward with a more open and honest revelation of what's gone (or going) wrong. It would be nice to see something similar about the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) electrification debacle!

[stuving]

Well at least someone appears to be better at coming forward with a more open and honest revelation of what's gone (or going) wrong. It would be nice to see something similar about the GWML^▸ (Great Western Main Line) electrification debacle!

When the - quite short - delay was first admitted, I thought the main reason was management being so committed to meeting the targets that they had deluded themselves that it was still possible (helped by a bit of frog-boiling). Given the size of the backlog now revealed, that isn't credible; something else must be involved.

But it's still true that the old management had a vested interest in hiding the bad news, in the (vain, almost always) hope it might get better with time. Mark Wild's self-interest, on the other hand, is in finding everything that's not perfect and putting the blame on the Morgan Crew. If I was him I'd look to err on the pessimistic side, and overstate the delays a bit, rather than risk fixing a new date and then missing that. So a date projected from his statements could well move earlier as work progresses.

I had loads of arguments at work with project managers and directors who insisted on customers seeing progress reported through rose-tinted Gantt charts. The trouble with that is you back-load the bad news, and end up scrambling to deliver after your last promised date ... several times over.  I would always rather withhold good news until it was clearly in the bag, on the grounds that I wanted the punters' last impression of our performance to be a good one. Good news last, rather than good news first.

[Electric train]

I had loads of arguments at work with project managers and directors who insisted on customers seeing progress reported through rose-tinted Gantt charts. The trouble with that is you back-load the bad news, and end up scrambling to deliver after your last promised date ... several times over.  I would always rather withhold good news until it was clearly in the bag, on the grounds that I wanted the punters' last impression of our performance to be a good one. Good news last, rather than good news first.

And here far too often inlays the problem, senior program directors / managers even engineers are not immune of "tell the client what they want to hear" the view being the client is only interested in the end product and now how its got to

[didcotdean]

The interesting point for me in this was that the upper layers of management, and the press and relationship side was run down through 2018 as if everything was on schedule.

Maybe otherwise there could have been more old-fashioned 'Management by Walking About' where the fact that things weren't anywhere near ready could have been seen by a few pairs of eyes rather than slavishly believing reported RAG^▸ (Radstock Action Group) sheets.

[TaplowGreen]

Is "Rail Project to be delivered years late and massively over budget" even News any more? Sounds more like Business as Usual.

[Dispatch Box]

Is "Rail Project to be delivered years late and massively over budget" even News any more? Sounds more like Business as Usual.

I often wonder how long it would of taken Brunel and his navvies to of built it.

[Celestial]

Is "Rail Project to be delivered years late and massively over budget" even News any more? Sounds more like Business as Usual.

I often wonder how long it would of taken Brunel and his navvies to of built it.

Do you often wonder how many of his navvies would have died as well?  (More than 100 on Box Tunnel alone.)

[Dispatch Box]

Is "Rail Project to be delivered years late and massively over budget" even News any more? Sounds more like Business as Usual.

I often wonder how long it would of taken Brunel and his navvies to of built it.

Do you often wonder how many of his navvies would have died as well?  (More than 100 on Box Tunnel alone.)

Is that so, that's awful, never believed that, what were they doing about their health and safety, and how did they probably die?.

[broadgage]

I doubt that detailed and accurate records are available from the Brunel era, but it is known that many lives were lost in the building of box tunnel, and on other large civil engineering projects.

Common causes of death included being crushed or buried by cave-ins and collapses, falls from a height, run over by wagons, and accidents with explosives (gun powder in those days, modern explosives are safer to handle)

Modern health and safety standards add to costs and to the time taken, but OTOH^▸ (On The Other Hand) modern machinery increases work rates, and powered machinery reduces the numbers of workers engaged on a task, and therefore also reduces the number of potential victims if an accident occurs.
Medical care has improved greatly, many workers today survive accidents that would have been fatal in earlier times.

Present day safety standards should NOT be blamed for the Crossrail delays, these standards were known about at the planning stage and should have allowed for.