WorldWide Drilling Resource

WorldWide Drilling Resource ® is a proud member of this association. National Drilling Association Tel: 877-632-4748 Fax: 216-803-9900 www.nda4u.com 11 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® NOVEMBER 2013 Crossrail Project - A Great Example Compiled by Bonnie Love, Editor WorldWide Drilling Resource ® The Crossrail project in the United Kingdom (UK) is among the most sig- nificant infrastructure projects ever under- taken in the country. Noted as Europe’s largest construction project, work on the began in May 2009, and there are cur- rently over 9000 people working across over 40 construction sites. Eight tunnel boringmachines (TBMs) will be drilling beneath the streets of London to construct 26 miles of new rail tunnels. At peak, the TBMs will drill over 325 feet per week, extracting nearly five million tons of material. So, what do you do with nearly five million tons of soil? The Crossrail project decided to recycle the material by using it to help create a new 1500-acre nature reserve called Wallasea Island in Essex. TheWallasea Island project, by Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is being hailed as Europe's largest habitat creation project. The two projects came together in 2009, when Terry Morgan, chairman of the Crossrail project, contacted Chris Tyas, project manager of the Wallasea project to see if the soil being excavated for the Crossrail project could be used at Wallasea project. “It sounded quite wacky to start with,” Tyas admitted, “but when you think it through, it makes perfect sense.” Slowly, a plan emerged. Morgan's team would deliver the soil from beneath the busy streets of London, where it has been for a millennia, to the reclaimed natural land- scape at Wallasea. The process of getting a single ship- ment of material fromLondon's Tottenham Court Road station to the Wallasea site was a logistical challenge. First, the soil is removed from a tun- nel at a railhead just west of London's Paddington station. Then, the soil is car- ried by rail to a wharf in East London, where four times a day a ship takes it to its final destination. At Wallasea Island, Crossrail installed an unloading facility. From there, a con- veyor belt brings the material onshore to a spreader where it is used to create habi- tats on the island. According to Tyas, the Wallasea Island site should be completed by 2017. It will accommodate human as well as avian visitors. Currently, 14,000 birds already use the parts of the island which have been redeveloped, and Tyas expects up to 50,000 at the winter peak in the future. Earlier this year, Crossrail celebrated its first million tons of soil donated to the Wallasea project. Photos courtesy of crossrail.co.uk Tourists are also expected to visit the island, both to bird-watch and enjoy nature. Both Morgan and Tyas hope this project will pave the way for similar collaborations in the future. Progress on the Crossrail project, which will link the City of London with Maidenhead and Heathrow in the west, and Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east, hit its halfway mark earlier this year. The first Crossrail services through central London are expected to begin in late 2018, with some experts estimating it will serve an estimated 200 million annual passengers.