East West Rail (EWR)

Connecting cities, improving lives: how our work with East West Rail is transforming the Midlands and England’s Economic Heartland.

Transport is rarely just about moving from A to B. It’s about transformation.

On the one hand, the East West Rail (EWR) scheme is a transport improvement project: currently under delivery by Network Rail and development by the East West Rail Company, it will develop a strategic rail transport link connecting East Anglia with central, southern, and western England.

But on the other hand, it’s much more than that. This project isn’t merely reopening a line - it’s revitalizing this strategic growth arc, regenerating the area by creating jobs and exports for the UK economy. These works will re-establish a rail link between Ipswich and Oxford via Cambridge, Bletchley and Bicester, improving their transport connections - yet that’s only part of the story.

Hubs are where the heart is

Without good transport options, cities struggle to benefit from their neighbours. While it’s usually easy to get from one city to another by car, public transport is often more limited, making it harder for people from one city to integrate with another. Travelling to London, often hundreds of miles away, is sometimes simpler than making the short connection to a regional city. The effect tends to grow more pronounced with distance. Ipswich is twice as far from Oxford than London, but it takes four times longer to get there by train (52 minutes to London versus 207 minutes to Ipswich).

Connection isn’t sufficient to make a region prosper. But it does help to ensure that the knowledge and abilities of skilled workers and the institutions that train them are more widely available.

According to The Economist, ‘with the great exceptions of Edinburgh and London, Britain’s large cities do not lift their hinterlands’, going on to cite poor transport links as a factor. And when regions suffer from poor connectivity, they are prevented from harnessing the power of their own capabilities. Intellectual capital is vital to growth. Linking university towns with strong intellectual capital with neighbouring areas can yield mutual benefits. So by improving rail connections, we can help to unlock the region’s potential.

Laying the foundations

In 2015, we entered into a contract partnership with Network Rail, Laing O’Rourke and VolkerRail, forming the EWR Alliance. Together we won the contract, with a target cost of £1.2bn. But our work goes further back. Having delivered the original business case, design, and economic appraisal of the railway’s re-establishment, we built up a deep understanding of its needs and challenges.

The East West Rail Consortium commissioned us to support the outline and detailed design services for phase 1 of the project between Oxford and Bicester. Work on this first phase of activity started in 2009 and the first new section of railway, connecting Oxford Parkway and Bicester, opened in October 2015, with the section linking Oxford and Oxford Parkway officially opening to passengers in December 2016. Originally named BiOx, it was first commissioned by Chiltern Railways to provide a new route into London (the first new direct route in over a century) by connecting Bicester Village and a new station, Oxford Parkway, to London Marylebone. It was then amalgamated into the overall EWR scheme.

Our work included upgrading 15km of existing single track to dual track; allowing line speeds to increase to 100mph; and creating the foundations for future electrification. Our engagement also included the early development works for improvements to existing stations at Islip and Bicester and the delivery of a brand-new station at Water Eaton.

But to achieve all of this, we worked in collaboration with our partners. Like all large-scale, multi-stage major infrastructure projects, being agile and flexible is vital. From the start, we’ve leveraged our relationships with Laing O’Rourke and Volker to ensure that we always have the right skills at the right time for the project.

When working in partnership, we don’t see ourselves as passive consultants implementing a blueprint for a fee. We’re active, engaged co-partners, always looking to find improvements and efficiencies to pass on to our clients and the wider public. Where necessary, we’ll challenge plans and procedures to produce better results. In the second phase of the EWR programme, intrusive investigations of the Bletchley flyover resulted in a significant increase in the scope of the required strengthening works. In response our team looked at alternatives and developed a revised scheme to partially reconstruct the flyover. This alternative solution provided predictable delivery with a capital cost and risk saving of over £60m and a 11-month reduction in overall delivery programme.

Our team are developing this solution in parallel with the site enabling activities, working closely with the delivery team to ensure the design and delivery work seamlessly together.

Holistic and harmonious

All engineering projects must be balanced against ecology. We cannot continue treating the environment as a limitless resource or a backdrop for our infrastructure. Nature is a complex matrix of relationships, and each area will have its own intricacies. Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire are no different. There were huge challenges around protected species and their habitats. How could we deliver the prosperity that the new railway promised without sacrificing the local ecosystem?

To protect the environment, we’ve placed ecologists at the heart of the project since day one. At one point we had over 300 ecologists completing surveys and working to develop intelligent solutions capable of delivering the improvements in a manner that respects the natural environment.

Ultimately, we see engineering in terms of relationships. This mind-set reveals the complex correspondences underlying so much of nature and society. And, by having insight into the hidden connections and impacts between different aspects of the same project, we can design better, more suitable solutions.

Britain’s transport network is an excellent example of this interconnectivity. Improving the railways can entice drivers to ditch their vehicles for the train, removing cars from the road, reducing pollution, and helping to make transport greener. It can also reduce congestion on Britain’s strategic road network, easing the pressure on its maintenance. Improvements in inter-regional passenger connectivity and journey times between Oxford, Bicester, Bletchley and Bedford/Milton Keynes, for example, is not just a boom for commuters. The introduction of a new and reliable train service across the east-west corridor will also improve housing, employment, and the local economy. Understanding the holistic relationship between the transport network, society, and environment is crucial to maximising these benefits.

Already, the EWR programme has shown enormous promise. But there is much left to do. Our on-going involvement in the EWR programme will help our client deliver a sustainable transport solution, supporting economic growth in the area and meet the demands of the future. Our input will play a large part in shaping the future of transport services along this important transport corridor.

Delivering digital

To maximise the benefit offered by digital innovation, we made our digital engineering team part of the core function. Together, they work with all disciplines to design workflows and build digital models that are used for planning, methodology of works, and beyond. Setting up and delivering fully coordinated digital engineering on a massive project with all the component parts fitting together demanded intelligent system integration. It was also instrumental in securing Transport Works Act approval, as it enabled us to communicate effectively with local communities.

By establishing a single source of truth through BIM principles, we used it to build consensus around costing, sequencing of works, interdisciplinary communication using design, and more. In such a wide-ranging and complex project, these tools were crucial in creating good communication, unlocking hidden efficiencies, and ensuring common standards of quality.

It hasn’t been without pain, but true innovation is never seamless. Yet it has brought us huge benefits. In five years, our team has pushed the boundaries with new technology. Bentley are one of the leading software providers, and we’re at the forefront of cutting edge technologies like VGIS including live augmented reality.