Abbey Wood station – Crossrail

VGC is supplying various categories of labour resources to this project, including dumper drivers, crane controllers, slingers and groundworkers. They have been working primarily on footbridges across the Plumstead end of the line and rail replacement works.

Our Be Safe by Choice key influencer at Abbey Wood is Jose Rivero-Zea.

Naven Bhanot and Cliff Harvey were thanked by Balfour Beatty at a ‘close call winners’ presentation at Abbey Wood Crossrail site in August 2015. They’d shared improvement opportunities for safe access to site and vehicle safety and logistics.

A Network Rail assessment of the works in August 2015 gave special mention to Robert Agyei, gateman, for being “very vigilant in making sure anyone entering site took the safe route. When heavy plant was entering, he enforced exclusion zones and ensured the public were stopped / safe.” Network Rail inspected against supervision, environment, safety and site specific criteria, and gave the worksite, under the supervision of Balfour Beatty’s Jimmy Mechie, a score of 100%.

The Balfour Beatty section works manager emailed in March 2016: “Thank you, all of you who gave up your Easter to deliver a significant amount of work this weekend, against a background of relentless and challenging poor weather… performed superbly with great professionalism. I’ve had very positive feedback from the Network Rail client team and the Balfour Beatty executive team.”

The Crossrail project at Abbey Wood involves the demolition of the existing station and replacement of a temporary station located in the old station car park.  Two tracks for Crossrail services will be installed next to the existing North Kent lines and a number of bridges along the track will be raised and lengthened so they can accommodate the overhead electric wires that will be used by Crossrail trains.

From 2018, a train every five minutes during the peak will allow residents to travel through the capital without having to change trains. The journey from Abbey Wood to Canary Wharf and Bond Street will be around 20 minutes quicker and to Heathrow will be around 40 minutes quicker. Passengers using the station are predicted to almost treble within the next 15 years, with numbers during the morning peak expected to increase to over 10,000 by 2026.

The development at Abbey Wood represents a major improvement in public transport for the local area, and is the single biggest addition to the local rail network since the North Kent line was built in 1849. It will be a significant spur to regeneration in Abbey Wood, encouraging investment and development as well as supporting jobs and businesses in the local area.

Read about VGC’s work for Crossrail at Bond Street station with primary contractor Costain Skanska JV.

Read about VGC’s work for Crossrail at Farringdon station with primary contractor Bam Ferrovial Kier joint venture.