Bechtel and Crossrail have completed tunneling on Europe’s largest engineering project.
“One of the biggest challenges on this project was tunneling beneath centuries of tightly-woven infrastructure”, said Ailie MacAdam, managing director for infrastructure, Europe and Africa, Bechtel. “Huge tunnel-boring machines have been chewing up London’s earth around the clock, moving through ground that’s honeycombed with networks of sewer lines, water and gas mains, foundations of buildings, and even some London Underground tunnels dating to the 1860s.”
With the project 65% complete, Bechtel will now focus on the integration and completion of rail and station systems in advance of testing, which will commence in 2017. Under a separate contract, Bechtel is also working as delivery partner for Network Rail to upgrade the existing rail network outside London to integrate with Crossrail.
The first Crossrail services through central London will start in late 2018. An estimated 200 million annual passengers will use Crossrail.
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