Helping the drains take the strain

Volatile weather generated by climate change is likely to put more strain on rail drainage systems than ever before. Innovative thinking and technical excellence from Lanes Group plc is delivering solutions.

Whether it is solving challenging flash flooding problems at a London rail terminus, maintaining stations on the UK’s newest railway line, or carrying out drainage investigations for one of the UK’s most important rail upgrades, Lanes has proven capability and capacity to get the job done.

The company is an industry leader for rail drainage investigation, design, repair, rehabilitation, including pipe and culvert lining, and installation.

Importantly, it also has its own inhouse professional services engineering team, so can provide seamless support for design and implementation of drainage renovation and new installation projects.

As the UK’s largest independent drainage and wastewater specialist, with 36 depots and specialist service hubs, Lanes also has unrivalled national reach and technical experience.

Technical expertise and experience

Rail infrastructure owners and their contractors know that behind the work teams from Lanes sits a company with the heft and expertise to support the most complex and challenging drainage projects.

The Lanes Rail Division incorporates the major service operation that supports Transport for London (TfL) in the maintenance of its London Underground and London Overground rail networks.

The division also includes UKDN Waterflow (LG) Ltd, which delivers a range of drainage investigation and project implementation services for Network Rail and its tier one contractors. Both teams also draw on the civil engineering experience and technical support provided by Lanes Professional Services.

The division’s strength is founded on the decades of support Lanes has provided for TfL in the maintenance of London’s rail network, primarily the London Underground.

Working on one of the world’s busiest, and oldest, passenger transit systems, has forged in Lanes a combination of technical expertise and experience fused with a can-do spirit that TfL knows it can rely on.

Lanes delivers drainage, seepage, and structure maintenance services across London’s underground network. It also delivers an FM contract for London Underground that includes painting and decorating, lock maintenance, vegetation control and high access maintenance.

Elizabeth Line – ‘robust maintenance systems’

The high performance levels achieved has resulted in Lanes also being awarded a contract to maintain all stations on the new Elizabeth Line, built by Crossrail, from Reading in Berkshire to Shenfield in Essex and Abbey Wood in East London.

The work, carried out on behalf of London Underground and Rail for London Infrastructure, has notable, in its first 12 months, for an intensive process of asset verification, explains Lanes Rail Director Martin Balcombe.

“We are bringing into maintenance many thousands of assets for the first time,” he said. “This is involving asset verification and developing access methodologies, so assets can be maintained safely, efficiently and sustainably.

“This process is going to continue for at least another 12 months and brings with it challenges that Lanes is well placed to manage. For example, the Elizabeth Line is not a light rail system, like the Underground, so has needed new working methodologies.

“We’re also working collaboratively with the many stakeholders inevitably associated with a line that interfaces with other transport networks across different geographies to make sure maintenance systems are robust and sustainable. In my view, only a service provider with Lanes’ experience and record of consistent high quality delivery can do this with confidence.”

Drainage maintenance for Network Rail

Lanes Rail also provided crucial support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its teams installed more than 65,000 COVID-19 social distancing stickers at every Underground station, other public locations and all rail depots and offices. They also set up more than 2,000 hand sanitisation units across TfL transport premises.

Lanes Rail, which operates from a service depot at Rainham, in Essex, also delivers services for Network Rail. And it supported the development of HS1, the 67-mile line that links London with the Channel Tunnel.

UKDN Waterflow (LG) Ltd is a separate Lanes company that sits within the Lanes rail division. It also delivers a wide range of drainage services for Network Rail and its main contractors.

Holder of a Network Rail Principle Contractor Licence (PCL), it carries out CCTV surveys and inspections, drain unblocking and cleaning, drainage asset mapping, track drainage, repair, renovation and replacement, new track drainage installation and non-drainage infrastructure works.

UKDN Waterflow (LG) can also deliver wider infrastructure services, often associated with catchment management or upgrade schemes, including: piling; reinforced concrete installation; earthwork stabilisation and remodeling; and vegetation clearance, including tree management.

Delivering rail maintenance work to the highest standard in the most challenging conditions has earned UKDN Waterflow (LG) a strong reputation for delivery that it has sustained over many years.

Innovative culvert replacement project

An example was the replacement of a collapsed concrete piped culvert at Cleeve, near Bristol during a 52-hour Christmas period possession. UKDN Waterflow (LG)’s early involvement in the detailed planning of the optimum solution in close conjunction with Network Rail was crucial to the project’s success.

Its delivery and planning team recommended a novel solution to carry out the removal of track panels needed during the project. Instead of utilising the client’s preferred RRV cranes and support RRV plant, two 50t excavators were used that went on to excavate, install, backfill and place track ballast above the newly installed box culvert structure. Critically, this saved time, and it also dramatically reduced the cost of the work.

Faced with continuous, heavy rainfall during the culvert installation, the operational team needed to redesign the over pumping regime just before work started to ensure the complex installation process was not stalled.

The first of several sections that made up the 28m box culvert was in place 31 hours into the possession, the last nine hours later. Thanks to smart planning that accelerated workflow, the culvert trench was fully backfilled just two hours after that.

Track panels were in place in another four hours, allowing the UKDN Waterflow (LG) team to vacate the site three and a half hours ahead of schedule.

Transpennine Route asset investigations

In another project, the company’s engineers have been working with Lanes Professional Services to devise a novel solution to a persistent flooding problem at the entrance to Victoria Station.

With access to the London Underground station just metres away, and tens of thousands of rail passengers using the space every day, devising a viable design and then implementing it were both huge challenges.

UKDN Waterflow (LG)’s solution, approved by Network Rail, was ingenious. It was to divert the surface water pipes vertically down into the basement with main outfall pipework being slung from the existing roof slab beams of the basement roof and then to a new outfall via installation within a bespoke heading structure.

Head of Rail Services Mark Croxford said: “It’s the ability to combine innovative thinking with a determination to achieve safe and sustainable solutions in a highly regulated maintenance and engineering environment that sets UKDN Waterflow (LG) apart, I believe. Where others may falter, we keep going.”

This determination to deliver applies to another major Network Rail project the team’s involved with. UKDN Waterflow (LG) is delivering asset investigations services for the Transpennine Route Upgrade, the project to modernise the line between Liverpool, Leeds and the North East.

Working for the Amey-Bam Nuttall joint venture leading the work to the West of Leeds, its teams have already surveyed and mapped 40 kilometers of drainage lines between Manchester and Dewsbury.

This has involved intensive investigations in more than 100 catchments, with the capture and reporting of 60,000 pages of data, gathered with CCTV surveys, topological surveys and asset condition surveys.

Project Manager Ian Sandford said: “Drainage is critical to service sustainability and reliability. It’s the only infrastructure element that interacts with all other systems. Therefore, Network Rail knows it must gather as much data as possible to ensure it’s correctly installed. This makes our job challenging, but the feedback we’re getting is positive.”

Integral professional services support

Lanes Professional Services is doing all the CAD work associated with the project. Its engineers and technicians also carry out stand-alone investigation and design work for rail clients, including topographical surveys, laser mapping, structural engineering design, and drainage and hydraulic design.

For example, they are helping Network Rail solve long-standing track flooding problems at Clapham Junction, one of the busiest stations in the country and, arguably, the most strategically important one in London.

Investigations involving CCTV, topographic and laser scanning surveys – have led to a solution designed to turn what has been frequent flooding, with subsequent major service disruption, into a system that can cope with once in half a century events.

Andrew McQueen, who heads up Lanes Professional Services, and has more than 25 years’ experience working in the rail environment, said: “Our aim is to create the best and most cost-effective outcomes that extend the life of assets and can be implemented with least disruption to the traveling public.

“That often involves thinking creatively and using remote working technologies that deliver solutions with least impact. The knowledge and experience of our teams delivers the creative thinking, and the financial clout of Lanes gives us the most appropriate technical solutions our clients need.”