Mersey Loop Track Slab Renewals

For the core works, the project team implemented 24 hour working to ensure the railway could be handed back on time and on budget. The conventional 12 hour shifts were replaced with two ten hour shifts overlapping by an hour, and a nightly maintenance shift of 8 hours. This helped to manage fatigue of the operatives and staff who were working in a challenging environment.

One major success story from the project was the collaboration between our project team and a number of Stakeholders involved with the project. Merseyrail who operate the services on the Wirral Line were a key stakeholder for this project. Story Contracting were able to reconfigure our programme to enable the reopening of James Street Platform 1 in February instead of June. The reopening allowed Merseyrail to run an increased service in addition to being DDA compliant.

Early contractor involvement allowed lessons learnt from previous schemes to be incorporated into both the designs and the methodology of the works. This in turn had a positive effect on Health, Safety and Quality as well as ensuring the project was delivered on programme and on budget. Story Contracting were able to reuse the existing concrete slab, saving both time and money for the client.

The project team was able to demonstrate further success by involving specialist contractors who had worked on previous phases of the track slab renewal. This ensured the knowledge and equipment was available to undertake the work safely and to a high standard. The scheme also utilised engineering trains to remove spoil from the site, reducing road traffic and ensuring the waste was recycled.