David Waboso reflects on another massive year of infrastructure on the Underground.

As the holidays approach, I always like to look back and reflect on the year that has passed. For capital programmes on the Underground, it’s been another massive and eventful one.

The standout event for me was the signing of the signalling contract for the sub-surface railway (District, Hammersmith & City, Circle and Metropolitan lines) with Thales. Once the new signalling is in place, it will give us an incredible uplift in capacity of up to 65% on our oldest lines.

"I used to bite my fingernails on Sunday evenings as I dialled into our conference calls to get an update on the likelihood of over-runs the next day. But now I’m much more relaxed as weekend in and out the track team hands back the railway on time, and in some cases, ahead of time!"

It shows the power of digital technology in overcoming the historical constraints of our fixed infrastructure. Moving block systems, combined with very clever regulation and slick metro operations, as we’ve proven on the Victoria, Jubilee and Northern lines, allow us to safely move more trains, more frequently and more reliably.

It hasn’t been an easy road to get to this stage with the sub-surface re-signalling, so it is particularly exciting that we are now seeing the fruits of this labour. We’re now successfully running the first train with the new Thales system at our test track at Old Dalby. This is a huge milestone for the team and means we’re well on way to start delivering this much needed upgrade.

Tottenham Court Road – like our other mega station projects at Victoria and Bond Street – is a huge engineering project on an extremely busy station and, for a very intrusive stage, adjacent to the platforms and a project that we have been working on for years and years. On the 6th December, bang on schedule, Central line trains started running through the station again. We have also opened one of the striking new glass entrance structures. We’re increasing capacity at this heavily used station, but also creating a much more pleasant streetscape.

We continue to make headway at Victoria station as well. This year saw the breakthrough of the tunnels between the south ticket hall and the new north ticket hall. This again is a milestone we set many years ago, so it’s exciting to see it delivered. Victoria is the second busiest station on the LU network – with more customers each year than Heathrow (by quite some way) – so again, a much needed upgrade.

"The year ended with the Association of Project Management asking me to be the next president. This is a great honour and will enable me to bring my perspective of delivering these massive programmes in an operational environment to the overall infrastructure debate."

Another very congested station that is getting a big upgrade is Bond Street. In September the tunnel to Crossrail broke through. Last week, the project was awarded the prestigious New Civil Engineer International Tunnelling and Underground Space Awards ‘Global Tunnelling Project of the Year’. (A really big deal if you’re in the business of boring tunnels!)

Another winner at those awards was our Bond Street to Baker Street Tunnel Relining Project, which won ‘Rehabilitation Project of the Year’. This was our project to repair the tunnel lining of the Jubilee line which was damaged over the years by water. This work has been a huge challenge due to the confined space the team had to work in, and because we were causing minimal disruption to customers – so almost all of the work was carried out at night.

Our track programme also had a massive delivery challenge this year. The team took out the north end of the Victoria line for work that will enable us to increase capacity on the line to 36 trains per hour next year. (This is the highest frequency of any railway in the UK and one of the highest in the world.) I used to bite my fingernails on Sunday evenings as I dialled into our conference calls to get an update on the likelihood of over-runs the next day. But now I’m much more relaxed as weekend in and out the track team hands back the railway on time, and in some cases, ahead of time! There’s no better example than the Walthamstow blockade, which was a huge amount of work, but completed a day early.

But it’s not just about upgrading old parts of the network anymore. We’re now extending the world’s oldest metro even further. Last month we agreed a funding package with Hertfordshire County Council to extend the Metropolitan line into Watford. The project is already well underway and we will begin construction next month.

And last, but not least, we’ve started work on the Northern Line Extension to Battersea, a project that will bring two new stations (Nine Elms and Battersea) and 3.5km of new tunnel. If you’ve been in the area recently, you will have seen all the cranes – the area is being completely transformed.

The year ended with the Association of Project Management asking me to be the next president. This is a great honour and will enable me to bring my perspective of delivering these massive programmes in an operational environment to the overall infrastructure debate. My key area of focus will be around delivering ever more assured projects, on time, to specification and within budget, and how we build the capability to deliver this.

I hope that you too have had a good year and wish you a very happy holiday season. Here’s to a massive 2016!

David Waboso is capital programmes director for London Underground