New dawn for New Street

It is almost exactly a year since the iconic£776m redesign of Birmingham NewStreet Station was officially opened by

the Queen. The re-purposed concourse,flooded with daylight from its vast andbrand new signature atrium, became aninstant hit with the hundreds of thousandsof passengers who use New Street every day.The immediate reaction from the publicwas all the more significant because only 18months previously, New Street had beennamed “Britain’s worst passenger station”by industry watchdogs Transport Focus,after a survey revealed it had the lowestsatisfaction levels among UK passengers.Since it was last rebuilt in the 1960s,

New Street, the busiest railway station inBritain outside of London, had outgrownits outdated building, creating a dismalfirst impression of Birmingham as thesecond city’s main gateway. The old stationhad been designed to cater for 650 trainsand 60,000 passengers per day. Just before Mace began the re-

construction in 2011, New Street receivedmore than 1,350 trains a day and had a

regular flow of 130,000 daily passengers,however, this could reach a peak of 250,000during events such as the CheltenhamFestival and Christmas markets makingclosures and overcrowding on safetygrounds more prevalent. The UK’s second city deserved better.Whilst New Street desperately needed a

face lift, if it was to provide any lastingregeneration for Birmingham it alsoneeded open heart surgery to improve trainand passenger flow, as well as a completeinternal reorganisation in order to attractshoppers to a flagship city development.While legacy is an oft-repeated mantra

these days, if infrastructure is to provideany widespread and lasting benefit forsociety it is crucial that it is engineeredwith the end goals in mind. For New Streetthese were:lCommunity buy-in – gaining the backingof local residents and businesses withNew Street to be the spur for a muchwider regeneration of a core area ofBirmingham city centre;

l Efficiency and innovation – pioneeringnew demolition and constructiontechniques in order to deliver a complexredevelopment on time and in budget;

l Employment – providing a legacy for theworkforce and the SMEs working on theproject including setting and exceedingtargets for the recruitment of localapprentices.

Community buy-inWith such high levels of criticism alreadydirected at this inner city development,

Almost 12 months after the opening of Birmingham’sredesigned New Street Station, Simon Dale takes a lookat the lasting legacy of this major infrastructure project.

Of course residents and businesses alsohad to be told bad news – for instance thathealth and safety tests, smoke alarms andfire alarms being tested would be done atnight. By communicating exactly when andhow long a particular piece of work wouldlast, people were more accepting of it, aslong as they knew when the work wastaking place so they could organise theirlives around it.

Efficiency and innovation Prior to beginning the works, Mace set upnoise monitoring stations on localbuildings which were designed to notifykey members of the construction team iflevels went beyond those that the city’senvironmental department had set. On anyoccasions where monitors were triggered,Mace could then respond within 10-15minutes. Mace also hired a sound engineerto design acoustic walls which sat behindthe assigned demolition area, furtherreducing the noise output. The team devised an innovative way of

using enclosed tunnels to work around thedaily flow of passengers. This was done bycreating a modular tunnel on wheels whichcould take the impact of falling debris andmaterials. It incorporated AV screens andhad a plug and play system to direct thestation’s main tannoy announcements. Thismeant that 180m of tunnels and walkwayscould be easily jacked up and moved alongat any time whilst passengers had animpression they were still walking througha station rather than a building site. Even with the most robust plans in

place, there are always surprises. Thediscovery of a huge amount of asbestos atNew Street during the second phase ofdevelopment put our programme intodelay. In total 60,000 hours were spent

removing the asbestos at a cost of £40m. We had already removed the original

internal structures and existing retail levelfloors to create the new atrium before thisbecame apparent. As a temporary solutionwe widened the beams out and put themon a hover track system but as this wasquite slow so we looked to significantlyreduce the time it took. Working with the local company JCB,

we developed a bespoke machine for theteam. The adapted 360 excavator wasdesigned to effectively munch around thebeams with oversized jaws, using a remotecontrol. It did this at a phenomenal pace.Even factoring in the setbacks, wemanaged to reduce the overall demolitionprocess from 13 months, to five monthsand three weeks. As a result, Mace won aworld demolition award for the workcarried out in New Street’s Atrium. Theunique piece of demolition machinery isnow used by Colmans and JCB acrossprojects where they have similarconstraints.

Employment and overall legacyWorking with Birmingham City Council’sEmployment Access Team and NetworkRail, we had set a target of placing 100apprentices onto the New Street projectthrough the supply chain. The 42 contractpartners on the scheme together withBirmingham College, signed a pledge to

take on local apprentices. We hadappointed exactly 124 apprentices by theend of the scheme. Most of the apprenticeshave now gone on to work in the industry,whilst all 12 apprentices who wereappointed by Mace are still working withthe business on new projects. A year on from the launch, Mace and the

many construction partners involved inNew Street’s redevelopment are stillreceiving praise from business leaders andpassengers. Members of the public can stillbe seen taking pictures of their reflectionsat the station’s main entrance while moreimportantly, people now come to thestation to meet and use the new facilities.The creation of the new Grand Centralretail centre has rejuvenated shopping inthe city. Now more than 6,000 retail jobsare supported by the Grand Central andneighbouring Bullring.As a result, the city has moved from

12th to third in the national retail rankingsand seen an 11% increase in its visitoreconomy. Now 88% of passengers who usedthe station between March and May 2016were satisfied with their stationexperience, a rise of 23 percentage pointsfrom 65% two years ago.

Simon Dale is business unit director (Central &South West) at Mace

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there came equally high levels ofexpectation. There was also an inevitablyabout the station’s redevelopment. Withthe need to keep disruption at an absoluteminimum during the day, much of theheavy demolition work had to be carriedout at night. To make a success of a majorinfrastructure development it is vitallyimportant to have the buy-in and trust ofthe local community. As such a significantamount of community and stakeholderengagement took place prior to bothdemolition and construction, with theconsultation of nearby residentialproperties, two large hotels, and almost 70businesses.Building trust with the local business

and residential community was key to thesuccess of this.Holding regular face-to-face meetings in

the on-site offices meant residents andbusinesses could find out exactly whatwould be happening over the course of thenext three to six months and beyond. At theArcade opposite the station were retailproperties, shops and a hotel. We wouldmeet with many of these stakeholdersregularly and provide daily updates ifrequired. If the nearby hotels were fullybooked for major events, sometimes one ortwo night stoppages had to be planned intothe build schedule to ensure thesebusinesses continued to thrive during afour-year build programme.On other occasions the hotels would

accommodate our work by moving gueststo the back so that we could continuewithout complaints. Lorry movements inthe city centre, particularly at night, werekept to an absolute minimum by openingup a local sidings which meant a Maceproject train could bring building materialin and out by rail.