Civil Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
across a large programme or portfolio of projects. The benefi ts of procur-
ing certain components in a coordinated and uniform way include
consistency of design, quality, performance, cost and delivery. Other
advantages include improving the security of supply or, conversely,
reducing supply risk. This strategy also gives purchasers knowledge of
forward demand and enables them to adopt a hedging approach to secure
supply well in advance and agree its price. There can also be signifi cant
benefi ts through bulk purchasing and economies of scale, which enable
the client to achieve reductions in material prices that, over the extended
duration of large programmes, can also help to mitigate infl ationary
pressures to some extent.
Other advantages of using common components across a programme
include the opportunity to solve certain supply problems, such as quality
Case study - Crossrail and London Underground escalators
An Industry Standards Group (2012) report recently highlighted the
deployment of a Common Components strategy for the Crossrail pro-
gramme, which could also be of benefi t to London Underground (LU) in
future. The report stated that:
The Crossrail project offered LU the opportunity to increase savings
compared with the original bespoke proprietary LU escalator design.
The Crossrail procurement team included key personnel from the
Olympics, where common purchasing arrangements to clear standards
had radically reduced costs, increased innovation and delivered suc-
cessfully. As with the Olympics, getting early and sustained interest
from the supply chain was seen as crucial in cutting costs and risks.
With 57 escalators needed - approximately the equivalent to seven
years of normal LU purchases - there was suffi cient size to get a wide
range of suppliers interested, particularly as the design was 90%
standard . . . with bespoke additions.
'The benefi ts to Crossrail were not just on purchase costs but
included reduced civils cost, as the escalators were smaller in cross
section so needed smaller-diameter tunnels; reduced risks on hando-
ver through early commissioning; 30 years of maintenance from the
supplier; and performance level in terms of availability and mean time
between failures that exceeded existing LU escalator performance.
The target cost for the Crossrail team was 25% less than the lowest
equivalent LU escalator and the team actually achieved better than
30% savings.' (Industry Standards Group, pp. 19-20)
