Northern Line Extension (NLE)

At the heart of London’s largest redevelopment for over 300 years, the NLE represents a once in a lifetime opportunity to extend the Underground to Battersea, contributing to the regeneration of Vauxhall, Nine Elms and Battersea areas. The extension supported the creation of around 25,000 new jobs, 20,000 homes and reduced journey times to the West End or City to less than 15 minutes.

We delivered the design, construction and commissioning works for the new twin-bore 3 km rail tunnel and new stations at Battersea Power Station and Nine Elms. This is the largest expansion project undertaken by London Underground Limited (LUL) since the 90’s. We have built a strong partnership with LUL, working towards aligned project objectives.

Core project objectives include maintaining the infrastructure to provide a safe and reliable underground service, constructed using innovative temporary works to ensure no lost customer hours and a sustained passenger experience during works. Our Building Information Modelling (BIM) – led approach to modularisation is a fundamental part of our risk management process. This provides programme certainty and ensures constructability, while de-risking construction activities at the design stage.

Our project-specific design approach produced visible enhancements to safety, programme, risk, environment and cost. We re-designed the Kennington Step Plate Junctions (SPJs) to deliver a programme reduction of seven months on this piece of work, without disrupting the existing LUL operations. This also eliminated the need for compensation grouting to control settlements, due to the reduced expected settlements.

As a result of our efforts to leave a sustainable legacy in the community, we achieved the LU Beacon Award at all our NLE sites during several consecutive years, reflecting outstanding practice in safety, environment, cleanliness, considerate construction, management and people values.

Added Value

• Innovative value engineering and construction proposals have minimised the impact and programme on SPJ works, achieving a 40% reduction of the SPJ length.
• 70% of structural works completed offsite to enhance safety and quality, and to minimise disruption.
• Over 845,000 tonnes of excavated earth has been sent via the River Thames to Goshems Farm in East Tilbury, to used to create arable farmland.
• 450,000 lorry movements taken off London’s roads due to our river transportation strategy.