London’s Thames Tideway, an advanced sewer system with a price tag of £4.5 billion (US$5.6 billion), has been completed, announced Tideway last week. The final stage was marked by the installation of a substantial 1,200-ton concrete lid, sealing the deepest shaft of the project.
The Thames Tideway Tunnel, a 25km-long sewage tunnel, is engineered to significantly decrease sewage pollution in the central London River Thames.
Each year, tens of millions of tonnes of storm sewage overflow into the River Thames. Once fully operational, the new infrastructure will almost entirely reduce these overflows.
Tideway, the company responsible for constructing the super sewer, has successfully built the entire 25km main tunnel, a 7.2m-wide, a 4.5km connection tunnel in south-east London, and a 1.1km tunnel in south-west London.
Andy Mitchell, CEO of Tideway, stated: “This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The underground civil engineering on the Tideway project is now complete following eight years of dedicated hard work from all our teams working in the capital. There is still work to do – we need to finish some above-ground structures and, crucially, test the system – but this nonetheless marks an absolutely critical milestone for the Tideway project and for London.”
The tunnel, reaching depths of up to 67 meters underground, extends from Acton in the west to the Abbey Mills Pumping Station in Stratford to the east.
Over 30 combined sewer overflows (CSOs) will be redirected from the sewerage network into the primary tunnel, directing the flow to the Tideway Pumping Station for eventual transport to Beckton sewage treatment works.
Utilizing tunnel boring machines (TBMs), the main tunnel construction consisted of four drives from three primary sites, with primary tunnelling concluding in April 2022.
The eastern section of the project has been managed by a collaboration between Costain, Vinci Construction Grands Projets, and Bachy Soletanche. In the central section, Flo, a joint venture between Ferrovial and Laing O’Rourke, has led the efforts. The oversight of the western section has been under the responsibility of BMB, a joint venture between Bam Nuttall, Morgan Sindall, and Balfour Beatty.
Tideway will now commence the ‘commissioning’ process to ensure the new infrastructure functions as designed before aiming for full operation in 2025.
Source :Tideway
