Bond Street is one of the ten new central stations on the Crossrail scheme, nestled among prestigious buildings and busy shopping precincts of Oxford and Regent Street. This Costain and Skanska JV has two ticket halls around 400m apart and interchanges with the Central and Jubilee lines.
London’s congestion above ground is a challenge to navigate, but the 225 metres of passenger platforms 28 metres below ground is much more complex! Bond Street excitingly combines massive heavy infrastructure with extremely complex mechanical and electrical fit-outs, to facilitate the advance signalling and control systems. On top of that, Bond Street sets an incredible standard for public infrastructure, whilst also meeting security and usability requirements.
With 6-7 floors per ticket hall and 400-500 people (minimum!) working on a shift, it was difficult to know where people were, what they were doing and how to avoid getting on top of each other. Shifts were subsequently missed, as a result of subcontractors having to stand down because they couldn't get into a particular workplace. The project's coordination issues were a result of the extensive workforce, management teams and diverse trades needed on-site at the same time.
The team quickly sought a solution that would help improve the accountability and coordination of the project. As part of a new short-term planning process, Aphex was introduced! As opposed to the subcontractors building their works in silos and subsequently leaving teams to work out what's going on, the engineers are now empowered to build and drive their own program. What's more, Aphex automatically finds and tracks coordination issues, which gives the team full control.
“The engineers have really detailed programs on Aphex, cross-discipline too! I think we’re in a really good place, we have it down to a T”. Anneel Majid, Planning Manager
Since the introduction of Aphex and their new short-term planning process, MEP Planning Manager - Anneel Majid - has been hosting a weekly collaborative planning session in their ticket halls. The team will gather around two projectors, which display both the gantt and map views of their project. A sequence of works and the allocated resources will be agreed on, before locking in the plan and using Aphex to automatically generate PDF versions, which are then distributed to the supply chain.
“Aphex has changed the engineer’s outlook and attitude towards the program, they feel like they have full ownership now” Sally Sanders, Planner
Now, with Aphex, the commercial team is also able to view an automated breakdown of delay reasons on Aphex and hold subcontractors accountable. With more insight into their delay reasons, the productivity on the team has soared.
The team have now locked down a process that has made engineers feel empowered, given teams the confidence to know their planned works are accurate and provided more senior members with reliable data to help them understand their delays more clearly.
