Success under pressure… Crossrail’s Whitechapel station required doors that were security rated and fire, sound and… …pressure resistant.
The Crossrail C512 Whitechapel Main Station Works is part of the Elizabeth Line project. The Elizabeth line runs for 60 miles starting from Reading and Heathrow in the west, passing through London and out to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east.
Expected to serve around 200million passengers a year, the railway will have 41 stations, of which, 10 are newly built and 30 upgraded.
Whitechapel station is an interchange for both the Hammersmith & City and District Lines and London Overground. The new Elizabeth Line station is interwoven with the existing transport services linking to an elevated station concourse.
The works being carried out by BBMV (Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall and Vinci Construction) include 5 shafts and 500m of platform. The complexity and scale of the works is comparable to building an ocean liner underground with access for all work via the funnels!
Teckentrup supplied the steel doorsets for the project. The requirements for the project were:
500+ doors comprising of:
Specifications required characteristics on doors as large as 4.2m x 4m to provide:
Planning commenced in 2016 with installations beginning in July of 2017. The project began with the shafts and specialist pressurised ventilation areas. These required pressure, acoustic and fire rated doors that allowed the shafts to maintain the pressures needed to create air flow into the station and tunnels. The doors also had to be capable of withstanding higher pressures in a fire scenario when fan speeds and consequently pressures are greater.
Shafts required doors with two-way 5kPa pressure, fire and acoustic capability. The shafts generate high acoustic levels and to overcome transmission, a twin door solution was developed specifically for the project. Teckentrup’s DW67 door, rated at 57dB was paired with a second Teckentrup T60 door rated at 42dB, 5 kPa pressure in either direction, SR3 security and fire resistance of 120 minutes’ integrity and 60 minutes’ insulation. The size of these doors at 3.2m square was typical of the high specification required. Durward Street shaft took around 100 doors and Cambridge Heath shaft 130. Shafts descend 30 meters and have 6 levels below ground.
Once shaft works were complete the project moved to the other areas – platforms, side tunnels and management buildings. The Group Station Manager's (GSM) building encompasses offices for management and plant and equipment rooms on the lower levels. The building is located just off the platforms and includes 65 doors, many of which are front of house doors and SR3 rated.
As the project completes in 2019, the final stages will see more front of house doors installed, a number with special brass finishes to tie into the architectural finishes of the station.
The key aspects of the project were providing compliant, certified product at large sizes that met the complex specification of pressure, fire, acoustics and security in a single product and the twin door solution development for the extreme acoustic requirements. Overcoming design challenges to achieve the right solution alongside managing the project at such a complex site were further noteworthy achievements.
Jim Rodger, Teckentrup’s Managing Director commented,
