Hi, I'm Catherine, senior project manager
for HS2 on the Bromford tunnel and here I am stood in front of the eye
of the first tunnel in the Bromford East Portal at Water Orton. The Bromford Tunnel is
3.5 miles long, taking high speed trains from Bromford
East Portal here at Water Orton under the Park Hall Nature Reserve, to the West Portal at Washwood
Heath, where the trains then continue into the Curzon Street Station in the heart of
Birmingham city centre. Originally, the tunnel was meant to be shorter. However, we've extended it to remove the
need for complex engineering above ground. There are huge benefits to
the extension of the tunnel, not least in the Park Hall Nature Reserve, we no longer need to remove parts
of the ancient woodland and we're also avoiding the
need to divert the River Tame. The first TBM Mary Anne was launched last summer. Mary Anne is better known as the famous author, George Eliot, who was born in the Nuneaton. So far, the first TBM has tunnelled
under the Park Hall Nature Reserve, the River Tame, and will continue
along the line of the M6 motorway. So we are now roughly at a third of the progress, slightly more than. 800 rings and we keep going making steady progress and Mary Anne is
still performing and behaving correctly. Mary Anne is just one piece of a big jigsaw. So actually it may be the
queen of the show, but actually there is a big part around that,
which enables us to launch a machine. So it takes years to come to that point. We first need to build the box. We need to build all the surroundings,
then we need to order the machine. The machine is to be built in
Germany, fully tested, shipped here, reassembled, fully tested,
and then finally of we go. So the launch is a critical phase per say. It's more a slow start. We have to build up to a learning
curve, we have to enter the ground, we have to understand
how the ground is behaving and the reaction of the
machine to the ground twisting and adjusting to different parameters. We also encounter our first third parties along the way. Whether it is Severn Trent [Water], Openreach. We are now in the close
vicinity of Network Rail. We are actually in their zone of influence. So it is a lot of communication
and organisation to make sure our third parties are
satisfied with the level of expertise. And we have a second team
which is just gearing up, which is the civil works team,
which will be building whatever is coming
just outside of the tunnel, because when the train is entering very fast, they need to go through
some aerodynamic structure because of our high speed train. so the
nature of the train makes it necessary. So the civil works team is
gearing up to prepare those works, at the moment with very impressive
formwork just being assembled. Behind me you can see our second TBM, Elizabeth, who has just been launched. We talk about the first TBM,
now we are on the second drive because we will have two machines
running at the same time. So the team is actually outside because we're just coming out of a phase
of assembly which got us very busy for quite some months
to get all the pieces together. Part of them coming from abroad
and part of it coming from Dorothy, which was our tunnel
boring machine in Long Itchington. So we've been transporting, dismantling
part of Dorothy, transporting here, down to here to Bromford, and
we've been reassembling that since then. She's named after Elizabeth Cadbury of the Cadbury family, the well-known local philanthropist. The name, it's based on the school
community engagement programme. We have Balfour Beatty Vinci,
which is very dear to us. We've done a lot of engagement with them. We've helped develop their forest playground. So there is this long term building relation. So when we have to come up with the name, we asked the school if they were
happy to propose a name for us. This is from our year one children because in the curriculum
they learn a lot about Cadbury World. The children came up with Elizabeth
because of how much she did for the community. The children are going to be
really happy with the name. It's great, I've learned so much being here. You don't see this part of it. So it's been a privilege to come down
and actually see everything that's on site and how hard everybody works. In total, there around 9000 people working on HS2 in the West Midlands and approximately 450 working on this
specific operation alone. In the region., we've created
200 new apprenticeships. We are very keen on having
apprentices because it is the best way to learn about the job and to
transmit the experience from the older part of the workforce to the
younger part of the workforce. It’s great working on HS2. It's a once in a lifetime. Hopefully, it’ll be here for generations to come and hopefully it will help my career
progressing, doing different tunnels and maybe branching out into
different corners of the world. But it's not just in the West
Midlands where we're creating jobs. We've opened up a factory in Avonmouth,
in the south west, where we are employing approximately 100 people
to build the segments for this tunnel. And we are now at roughly 78% of the first drive, I mean, in
terms of segments produced. So we're well ahead of where
the machines are, which is good. Approximately 1.87 million tonnes of material will be excavated from these tunnels. Once excavated, the material
will be sifted at the on-site slurry treatment plant and then it will be
reused elsewhere on the Delta Junction. Instead of transporting the spoil
on the local road network, we're now transporting the spoil
from within the Water Orton site along purpose built haul roads. This will remove up to 260,000
HGV movements off roads, which will help to reduce our
impact on the environment. I'm an engineer, I'm always impressed to how we can come up with such
big projects, and now everybody is working toward the same goal and how
everybody is putting their contribution to the massive big picture, which is
building the railway for England. When it's completed, I think I will be, I will feel very proud of what we've achieved and we'll probably
recall all the good moments or the achievement or the challenges
we have to come to that point. It will be kept in the memory of the people which have contributed to that, and
we certainly remember all the people which have contributed for
us to come to that point in the human adventure that is
behind building big projects.
