Edinburgh-Glasgow improvement programme (EGIP)

VGC is providing teams and supervisors for the EGIP project.

The Edinburgh-Glasgow improvement programme (EGIP) is a £742 million Network Rail investment involving 150 single track km of new electrified railway.

VGC teams are primarily involved in routewide civils.

The works included digging trial holes to check the ground for pipes, cables, and uncharted mains. Our teams also created concrete box overhead line foundation stanchions. These will hold the steel beams to support the overhead electrified lines.

More recently, the teams have been creating hard stands along the route. This involves installing SPT bases (known as ‘bops’), then levelling the ground. Then they concrete kerbs in place, instal type 1 stone and compact it. Then it is covered with terram and finally finished off with 10mm chips. They are averaging one per night, which may sound easy, but represents a great deal of hard and efficient work.

They have also been clearing troughing routes for power and data cables.

The EGIP project will modernise and upgrade key junctions and infrastructure of the Scottish rail network.

It also involves electrification of the main line between Edinburgh and Glasgow and to Stirling and Dunblane.

Station and signalling improvements include:

• improvements to Edinburgh Waverley station
• three completely redeveloped stations (Cumbernauld, Haymarket and Queen Street)
• platform extensions at Linlithgow, Polmont, Falkirk High and Croy
• one new station (Edinburgh Gateway) and one new electric depot (Millerhill).

Local people, local jobs

We recruit local people to work on our projects. They understand local conditions, and people are healthier and happier if they work near home – and it’s better for the environment to avoid unnecessary travel. We also like to have our workforce representative of the local community.

VGC’s partnership with Edinburgh College has given HND students the opportunity to work on EGIP on summer work placements. This gives them valuable experience for their future careers in the rail industry.

We have also partnered with GP Strategies Training Limited in a programme which has seen previously unemployed people from Glasgow join the EGIP team.

If you are interested in joining our teams working on projects across Scotland, please fill in our register for work form.