Project Overview

Cleshar were tasked with upgrading South West Trains existing depot infrastructure, providing improved safety for train servicing staff. This included the installation of several kilometres of walkways, handrails, drivers hop-up’s and conductor rail cutback’s at South West Rail’s Fleet Depots.

Scope of Works

Innovations

Due to South West Railway servicing most of the rail infrastructure throughout Southern England, there was no capacity to arrange exclusive access or possession within any Depot as they needed to remain active 24/7 to keep their service running. The renewal works were undertaken despite the high levels of risk of operating within a live rail environment (i.e., train movements, live conductor rails, moving points equipment, derailments) throughout the programme. The following innovations were implemented to ensure the scope was delivered safely:

• Weekly De-confliction Meetings held with Depot Management to jointly coordinate delivery of the scope around normal train service and devise a weekly lookahead. 
• Daily consultation with the Depot Team at the start of each shift to ensure no late changes to the weekly lookahead.
• To account for changes to train services occurring during a shift, Cleshar’s team created a specific ‘Handback Procedure’ and SWR to allow areas to be handed over safely between both parties.

Benefits / Project Outcome