Crossrail C701

Crossrail is one of the most significant infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the UK.

At time of construction, it represented the first complete new underground line in more than 30 years, and Europe’s largest infrastructure project creating capacity for approximately 200 million passengers annually

Crossrail tunnelling began in the summer of 2012 and ended at Farringdon, in summer 2015 with the breaking through of tunnelling machine Victoria. For just over three years eight 1,000 tonne tunnelling machines bored 26 miles or 42 km of new 6.2m diameter rail tunnels under one of the world’s most densely developed urban environments. This proved uniquely challenging as tunneling occurred beneath the historic buildings, utilities, transit systems, and critical infrastructure of London.

Soil Instruments supplied over 30,000 sensors across 15 separate sites in Central London to be used in the close monitoring of the geotechnical impact of the project. These sensors were fixed on to buildings, running rails, cut and cover tunnel sections, cast iron tube tunnels, electrical sub-stations, existing stations, viaducts and various other structures throughout Central London. The construction made its way between 11 London Underground lines, under hundreds of parking lots, thousands of buildings and through miles of utility services.

With the historical and commercial stakes so high, it was imperative that the boring of twin tunnels beneath London and the construction of seven new stations had no significant impact on the surrounding area. This required extremely precise instruments and innovative systems. As well as providing close to 1,450 Electrolevel Beams, 25 Bassett Convergence Systems, 200 Tiltsensors and 270 Robotic Total Stations (RTS), Soil Instruments developed the Underground Construction Information Management System (UCIMS). This web-based, custom built data presentation suite monitored the movements of whole buildings and railways using over 22,000 3D geodetic glass prisms and allowed various stakeholders to see relevant data in near real-time, displaying over 85,000 data points to over 578 users.