Balfour Beatty, Vinci and Systra joint venture finish work on basement slab larger than six football pitches
A joint venture between Balfour Beatty, Vinci and Systra (BBVS) has completed the foundations of the HS2 station at Old Oak Common in west London.
Teams have finished work building the 850m-long basement slab at the Wilkinson Eyre-designed station, which will house six subterranean platforms for high speed trains.
It marks a significant milestone for the site, which will be the line’s southern terminus until work restarts on its central London station at Euston.
When complete, Old Oak Common will be one of the best connected stations in the UK, linking with the HS2 network to the West Midlands with its underground platforms, while eight further surface level platforms will link to the Elizabeth Line, the Great Western Railway and the Heathrow Express.
Teams have poured 76,000 cubic metres of concrete and used 17,000 tonnes of reinforced steel since April 2023 to construct a slab nearly two metres thick at its deepest point and covering 45,000 sq m, which is larger than six football pitches.
This has taken 91 concrete pours, each measuring between 600 sq m and 1,000 sq m, with up to 50 steel fixers and 20 joiners working on site at peak construction.
Work to complete the excavation of the station’s box was completed last summer with subcontractor Expanded removing 1,3 million tonnes of London clay.
To create the base slab, the team installed blinding and layers of shingle for drainage beneath a matt layer. Then a 1.85 metre high reinforcement layer was installed, with the team fixing the steel by hand before concrete was poured to compete the slab.
The next stages of the project include building the high speed platforms, completing the ground floor level above and then constructing the station’s superstructure.
Tunneling work to connect the station to the HS2 network is being carried out by a Skanska Costain Strabag joint venture.
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