With less than 24 hours notice it left contractors the mammoth task of closing down active construction sites as quickly and safely as possible.

Despite pleas for construction workers to be given “essential worker” status, the government ordered the shutdown of most sites leading to delays and cost overruns on projects big and small.

Lack of certainty over when the crisis would end made the planning and implementation of shutdowns all the more complex. Achieving safe closure with minimal notice only added to that challenge.

Most sites remained closed until June. After which Covid-related measures had to be implemented on site, such as social distancing, one-way walking systems and extra cleaning processes.

These extra measures both took time to implement and have also added time to some construction timelines.

Future planned projects have also suffered with Crossrail 2 and the Bakerloo Line Extension both mothballed as TfL coffers ran dry.

Most of the UK’s biggest infrastructure projects have in one way or another been hit by the impact of Covid restrictions, with Covid blamed for delaying progress at Hinkley Point C, Crossrail, Tideway and the A303 Stonehenge Tunnel.

Hinkley Point C

The cost of Hinkley Point C nuclear power station has risen by around £500M and its start date pushed back to June 2026 due to delays arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

In January, EDF said it expected the Somerset project to cost up to £23bn compared with a 2019 estimate of a £22.5bn maximum.

The start of electricity generation from Unit One of the power station had been scheduled for the end of 2025, but work postponed last year at the height of the first lockdown has not yet been completed.

In a message to employees, Hinkley Point C managing director Stuart Crooks said: “Ten months after it began, we are still facing the full force of the pandemic.

“Even though experience has allowed us to increase numbers on site during the pandemic from below 2,000 to more than 5,000, social distancing requirements still limit the number of people we can safely have on site at any one time.”

Crooks added that “a longer construction period also adds some cost — as does the reduced efficiency of operating a site for a long period under Covid-19 conditions”.

Crossrail

In August, Crossrail Ltd announced that it will need up to an additional £1.1bn to complete the central section of the London route.

The opening date of the Elizabeth Line has also been pushed back further and is now set for the first half of 2022 – although TfL commissioner Andy Byford has repeatedly called for the line to open at the back end of this year.

It comes after Crossrail’s board thrashed out a new timescale and cost for the project following Covid-19 delays and a downturn in productivity.

The cost increase is on top of the £2.15bn additional funding package which was given to Crossrail after it missed its original opening date of December 2018.

Alongside cost hikes on the Network Rail side of the project, the overall Crossrail scheme is now coming in above £19bn.

As revealed by NCE, the project also saw an increase in slips, trips and falls after sites were reopened as safety briefings switched to protecting against the spread of Covid – this has since been addressed.

Tideway

Covid-19 restrictions have added nine months and a further £233M to the completion date of the Tideway supersewer project, according to a shareholder announcement revealed in August.

Project promoter Bazalgette Tunnel Limited said that the project is now “likely to be completed in the first half of 2025” instead of the anticipated 2024 finish date.

Shareholders were also warned of rising costs with forecasts adding £233M to the previous cost estimates putting the overall cost of the project at £4.133bn.

In an investor report released a month earlier, Tideway revealed its “severe downside” forecast which outlined Covid-related extra costs could result in a cost rise of £900M.

The investor report did warn of a scenario in which the Covid-19 impact could drive up the final cost to £4.1bn. The report also outlined a second “worst-case” scenario that could see costs of the remaining work spiral by 24%, which translates to a total cost of £4.3bn.

Stonehenge Tunnel

The A303 Stonehenge Tunnel scheme was finally given the go-ahead by transport secretary Grant Shapps in November.

Shapps granted a Development Consent Order (DCO) for the scheme, despite The Planning Inspectorate concluding that the scheme would have “adverse effects” for local roads, would cut off local communities and was a risk to the natural and historical landscape.

The government’s decision on the DCO application had already been delayed twice. The first delay was due to the impact of Covid-19 and the more recent delay was due to the discovery of “archaeological finds”.

Documents released by the Planning Inspectorate show that the delay on the decision means that the opening date for the Stonehenge Tunnel will be pushed back by a year.

Tracked changes in the Highways England documents show that the impact of the planning delays will push the start date for preliminary work on the Amesbury to Berwick Down scheme back from summer 2020 to spring 2021.

The main work will be also delayed by a year to October 2021 with the completion date also moving back by a year to 2027.

Heathrow Airport Expansion

The airport industry has felt the impact of Covid harder than most. Passenger numbers have fallen off a cliff and major expansion programmes have come grinding to a halt, with London City Airport bosses pausing its own expansion in the midst of construction.

At Heathrow, things are just as dire. Heathrow handled 22.1M passenger in 2020, compared with 80.9M in 2019 but it wasn’t just passenger flights that have been affected by the pandemic as cargo volumes passing through Heathrow also fell by 28%.

Work on Heathrow’s planned third runway had stopped prior to Covid due to a High Court judge ruling that the government failed to take into account climate change goals when giving the project the go-ahead.

That ruling has since been overturned in the Supreme Court. However, the financial situation – and continued uncertainty around passenger numbers – means the expansion programme remains on ice for the time being.

Despite this, Heathrow bosses continue to push the need for expansion and will no doubt revisit it once travel bans are lifted.

High Speed 2

In the midst of lockdown version one, the government gave the industry a massive boost by providing notice to proceed for phase one of HS2 between London and the Midlands.

It effectively paved the way for main construction, with progress of HS2 ramping up at the back end of last year.

Tunnellers are now preparing to launch at the foot of the Chilterns and work is underway on the UK’s longest rail viaduct.

The second phase of the project, to take the line north to Crewe, has also been buoyed after receiving Royal Assent earlier this year.

What happens beyond Crewe remains to be seen with the government’s much-anticipated Integrated Rail Plan now delayed until after the local elections in May.

While the construction timeline for HS2 remains largely unchanged by Covid-19 for the time being, the project’s chief executive Mark Thurston admitted in May last year that HS2 stations and trains may be redesigned for post Covid-19 world.

The project has also been beset with construction complaints as work has ramped up. As revealed last week, more than 1,400 construction-related complaints were received last year, many of which relate to breaches of Covid-19 restrictions.

It has now been 122 days since Highways England pulled its Lower Thames Crossing plans, meaning Highways England has missed the target date for resubmission set by the project’s boss.

The planning application was withdrawn in November following feedback from The Planning Inspectorate that it was poised to reject the plans.

Lower Thames Crossing executive director Matt Palmer said that he expected the plans to be resubmitted within 90 to 120 days of the original application being withdrawn.

He added that he expected the development consent order (DCO) application to be resubmitted early in the New Year, adding that this is a “speed bump, not a complete stop”.

“It doesn’t feel like it will take a long time to turn around. If you look at other [DCO] applications that have been withdrawn they tend to be resubmitted in 90 to 120 days and I think we are looking at that sort of timeframe,” Palmer said.

“The application itself is 42,000 pages. We have taken all the lessons learnt from other, successful Highways England projects and applied those to the DCO.

“[The Planning Inspectorate] obviously wants more information so we have taken on board what they have said and we are confident we can provide that.

“The difficulty with a project of this scale and this significance is that there is no magic bar to jump over – it is about finding where that bar is and that’s what we’ve got to do now.”

The Lower Thames Crossing project will connect Essex with Kent to the east of London, helping to alleviate congestion on the Dartford Crossing.

The Planning Inspectorate’s concerns relate to construction plans and the predicted ecological and environmental impact of the scheme.

In a community update released last week, Highways England head of communications for its complex infrastructure programme Sarah Walker confirmed that the team is “busy” collecting the information required by the Planning Inspectorate.

She added: “The Planning Inspectorate has asked us to provide some more information on some technical elements of our application and we are busy bring this information together, but we also see this as a great opportunity to strengthen our application as we continue to work with key stakeholders to make the Lower Thames Crossing the best it can possibly be.”

A Highways England spokesperson added: “We are continuing to work with the Planning Inspectorate and are carrying out extensive engagement with our neighbouring local authorities to address their feedback, and take the opportunity to strengthen our application.

“We appreciate that there are millions of people every year who are frustrated by congestion on the Dartford Crossing, and who are looking forward to the opportunities that come with building a scheme on this scale, and we can reassure you that we will be resubmitting our revised, stronger application as soon as possible.”

Since pulling the application Highways England has awarded Jacobs a £162.5M integration partner contract for work on the Lower Thames Crossing.

Jacobs will act as a catalyst for collaboration between Highways England and the project’s three main works contracts.

Palmer previously announced the start of procurement on the design and build contract for the project’s tunnels at New Civil Engineer’s Future of Transport conference at the start of November.

The main works contractor will be responsible for boring the two 4.2km long tunnels beneath the River Thames; construction of portal buildings and approach roads; and fit out of the tunnel systems with systems including ventilation and lighting.

The tunnels will be the largest diameter tunnels in Europe and the third largest in the world with a diameter of 16m. They will also be the longest road tunnels in the UK.

Their size is determined by the need for each bore to cater for three lanes of traffic travelling at up to 70mph. The contract is expected to be awarded in 2022.

The tunnels and approaches contract is the first of the three main works contracts to be procured for the scheme, with the Roads North and the A2 M2 contracts expected to be announced early in 2021.

When speaking in November, Palmer added that the procurement timeline is likely to be pushed back a month or two because of the DCO setback but added that it “will have no impact on those bidding [for the contracts]”.

It is understood that the remaining contracts will be put out to tender within the next month or so.

Ground investigation work has been ongoing at the site since 2017. The third phase of ground investigation work finished this summer, led by the Perfect Circle JV comprising Pick Everard, Gleeds and Aecom.

In total, more than £100M has been spent on ground investigations due to the chalky conditions in that part of the Thames.

Source: New Civil Engineer

WHAT ARE THE FIRE IMPLICATIONS WHEN A BUILDING OWNER PLANS TO ADD THREE EXTRA STORIES TO A TOWER BLOCK?

Iain Cox, Chair of the Business Sprinkler Alliance

A property owner has submitted a planning application to add three additional stories to a North London residential tower block to help fund the removal of unsafe ACM cladding on the lower 14 floors. Whilst the concept might be  sound on paper, has the design considered the fire safety aspect and how to keep people safe in a building that will be changed?

The owner of Premier House in Edgeware, North London, is planning to add three additional stories and a rooftop garden to the building to partially fund the remediation work on the rest of the building. This planned alteration also brings into sharp focus the 2020 change to Permitted Development Rights (PDR) allowing building owners to add up to two storeys on top of existing detached and purpose-built blocks of flats through a fast-track process. In either case, it is critical to ask the question, how has the risk changed by adding these floors?

 Upward extensions such as the one proposed at Premier House need to be carried out after careful consideration and assessment of the existing building and its fire strategy. Which sort of evacuation plans are in place for the current building? How many extra people will be residents in the altered building? Will the staircases and door widths accommodate these additional people and provide access to firefighters? Which material is the new extension going to be made of?  Will it alter the fire load materially? The change needs to be considered holistically not on the addition alone.

There is a tendency to think about the structure, aesthetics and thermal efficiency of the new sections of the building when undertaking such alterations. What is needed is to reconsider the fire safety of the building from the ground upwards. Renovations and changes such as these are often intended to make the building better for its tenants.  Unfortunately the law of unintended consequences often means that these intentions are not realised.

Another consideration is the new 11-metre storey height sprinkler threshold that came into force last November. This will be an interesting case to follow as this change will have implications for the overall building. Regardless of this change, from a fire safety perspective sprinklers make a lot of sense and are a key component in the long-term strategy of any building. If considered early in the design process, they can be included and implemented whilst balancing costs. Developers need to have an open mind to other fire safety solutions, particularly sprinklers, and think about the best solutions to employ for such a change considering the building as a whole

Early consideration of automatic sprinkler systems in the design process, opens up a number of significant design opportunities which could provide solutions, to the challenges such projects will inevitably face.  This will only happen when the fire strategy for the whole building is considered at the start of a project.  We must stop thinking of fire safety as an ‘add on’.

For more information about the BSA visit the www.business-sprinkler-alliance.org

The Church could use its vast landholdings to transform the construction industry for the better as well as helping ease the housing crisis, the chair of the C of E’s housing commission told Building Design.

By taking a long-term view of its assets and requiring development partners including architects and contractors to sign up to the five values in the commission’s report, it could become a much more influential player in housing development, said Charlie Arbuthnot. The specialist in social housing financing led the Commission on Housing, Church and Community whose report, Coming Home, was launched last month.

It sets out a vision of housing that is sustainable, safe, stable, sociable and satisfying – and includes a series of detailed recommendations for government and society as well as for the Church itself.

If the Church insisted on working only with partners that shared these values, said Arbuthnot, “we start setting a benchmark for a very different ethos. That’s exciting. As soon as that becomes normative we have transformed an industry”.

He gives the example of a housebuilder with a bad reputation. “They build stuff and in six months when things start going wrong they don’t answer the phones,” he said. “That doesn’t fit with safe, stable or satisfying housing. If that housebuilder is pitching for a piece of work we’d say, ‘Your history suggests our five values aren’t important to you. I don’t mind if you do it cheaper than the others – our five values are more important.”

He admits the values are impossible to police but says they make a “healthy baseline” and if a contractor commits but doesn’t deliver, “the next contract becomes harder to win”. He also points to the much more enforceable Stewardship Kitemark which is currently in draft form.

It would allow a congregation with no experience of building projects to go to their local authority and say, “We have this land which could help address local housing need but we don’t want to release it unless what is built meets the five values. Can we talk about how we steward this well for the common good?”

The Church has nearly 200,000 acres of land, about half of it owned by a patchwork of parishes and dioceses and the rest owned by the Church Commissioners, the Church’s investment arm. They have built 3,820 homes in the last five years, just 21% of them affordable.

The Church Commissioners argue their hands are tied by charity law, but moves are now afoot to change the Church’s internal regulations which could free them to sell land below market price. Arbuthnot is hopeful this could be completed this year and he and his fellow commissioners are encouraging the Church to aim for a far more ambitious proportion of affordable housing.

They would also like to see the Church choosing not to sell its land but remain long-term stewards, reinvesting rents in further developments. Arbuthnot believes this would result in projects being better designed and built.

“We are absolutely saying that. We want to position the Church to build community really well – and I don’t do that if I sell my field to someone who builds the maximum number of units on it for the cheapest price,” he said. “If instead I choose to steward it, I’ll want to reflect Christ in the way I run it.”

The report also listed demands for the government, urging it to create a 20-year, cross-party strategy to transform housing and solve issues from affordability to dangerous cladding. It should include a specific target for the number of homes which are truly affordable, and seek to improve the quality and environmental sustainability of existing housing stock.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, who commissioned the report, said it came as the country faced a “Beveridge moment”, linking the current pandemic and the landmark 1942 report that led to the creation of the NHS and benefits system.

Speaking at a launch event for Coming Home, Helen Barnard, director of the anti-poverty think tank Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: “A lot of people can get behind this in the sector and more broadly and this is the moment to do it. The importance of a safe, warm home you can afford has been brought home to us in an incredible way and we need that economic stimulus.”

She added: “There’s a focus in the report on listening to tenants but we should go further and put co-design – working with people to design solutions – at the heart of everything we do.”

Source: Building Design