Safety Critical and Life Saving Tunnel Ventilation to 14 sites across the Jubilee Line in London. Delatim received a Quality Benchmark Site Award from TFL (Transport for London) for the JLE 514 Tunnel Ventilation Project for achieving consistent Quality Performance on Site.
Project No: 16173
JLE Tunnel Ventilation – Headend, LCP, MCC and ECP upgrade
Client: Delatim
Timeline: 2022 – 2025
The Jubilee Line is a London Underground line that runs between Stanmore in suburban north-west London and Stratford in east London, via the Docklands, South Bank and West End. It opened in 1979 and it is one of the newest lines on the underground network, although some sections of track date back to 1932 and some stations to 1879. The Jubilee Line extension from Green Park to Stratford opened to the public in 1999. Ridership on the line has increased substantially since the extension and the Jubilee Line is now London’s 3rd busiest underground line, with four of the 10 busiest stations in London.
The tunnel ventilation control systems needed modernisation to bring all up to safety and performance standards, without disruption to passenger service.
The safety critical and life-saving works were paramount as the original system had aged and improvements were needed to guarantee 100% reliability.
Initially, the scope was to replace components, but in collaborative consultation with Delatim, Burnell advised that a factory manufactured backplate replacement was preferable, allowing Burnell to provide a fully factory tested solution to minimise downtime for each site.
Delatim contracted Burnell to design, manufacture and commission new control panels (Local Control Panels, Motor Control Centres and Electro-Pneumatic Control Panels) which operate the Jubilee Line tunnel ventilation system.
Works included a large period of surveys and designs were created for every single panel. The survey process was extensive as it involved a period of discovery. Burnell identified how the existing system functioned and how to upgrade it to bring it up to the high standard and quality of the modern day. Gathering a general knowledge and understanding of the site and system in place was paramount in preparation for the new design. Burnell looked after the design and installation components and logistics to a large extent and the design and installation programme was approved by Delatim and Transport for London prior to installation.
The MCP and LCP panels were assembled in A frames where the height could be adjusted and lowered for optimum and ergonomic working; avoiding the requirement to bend for testing and installation. Backplate builds and testing was carried out for nearly a year and a half, between April 2023 and August 2024. Burnell designed, manufactured and tested 114 panels and 88 backplates in total for the Jubilee Line.
Burnell’s first installation took place on site in July 2023 and the final installation took place in January 2025. The number of Burnell engineers working on the project was variable throughout the period. The rota averaged out to be a team of three working on site for day work and a team of three working on site at night. Both teams were accompanied by a Burnell Project Manager overseeing health and safety and plant movements. The testing process involved a team of two.
Our works featured in the majority of the package and Burnell provided management guidance to ensure the installation was carried out according to our manufacturer specification and in line with Delatim’s CDM.
It was essential to deliver the panels on time to meet energisation dates. Burnell ensured testing and quality control was carried out at their manufacturing department in Dartford in advance and all deliveries were made to site for commissioning’s to be carried out on certain dates. Following each commissioning, all parties were enabled to move on to the next site. Meeting panel delivery times to site for an on-time-delivery of energisation was the driving force behind the project and core to all of the deliverables. A commitment to the energisation timelines was made across the board, from design to manufacturing to installation to driving to site on certain days to complete the final testing and commissioning. The wider stakeholder team included the London Fire Brigade and the LUL Power Networks team that isolated the power for the works to be carried out. In London, come midnight, the city is much quieter and without parking restrictions. Burnell were able to pull up outside the majority of stations to deliver the backplates in purpose made flight cases to manoeuvre all into location. The works were carried out between 12am and 4am to avoid any disruptions to transport services. Assembling and testing all new control panels and the headend system at Burnell’s manufacturing department rather than replacing individual components on site, enabled the installation to be carried out between the four allocated strict hours and accelerated the progress of the programme significantly.
Full credit to our management team Alexander Turner and Cliff Cooper, our site managers Rob Green and Matthew Butler and sales director Mark Osborne, whom worked with the Delatim project managers and site managers throughout the programme and carried out a lot of the work.
Energy efficiency upgrade
The call for cooling option is used to provide fan operation for temperature control and congestion modes on the Jubilee Line extension. Previously it would have to be done for the entire line and now it can be targeted on localised areas only, meaning not all large fans along the line are in operation at the same time and individual fans are only run when and where they are needed.
Headend system certified to SIL2 safety standard
The software that controls the Tunnel Ventilation System is certified to IEC 61508 SIL2. The stabilisation of the headend system involved the recovery and return to service of existing assets and a full replacement of servers, incorporating new WinCC headend interfaces. AIS (Applied Integration Services) developed the headend software to sit inside Burnell’s hardware – The installation of the new headend system is on target to be completed in 2025.
The purpose of the headend renewal is to improve the operation and the ergonomics of the user interface. Operators in the control room will benefit from the enhanced interface – significantly improving usability; the new user-interface enables the input of data to provide a diagnosis to aid the user, for example if there is an incident on the Jubilee Line in the future, the user interface will now produce the code to extract smoke in better defined location(s). The new system is user-friendly, less error prone and certified and audited to the SIL2 safety standard. The new software to SIL2 level won’t be removing the user requirement but it will aid the user. Designing the headend system to SIL2 rating level is a huge undertaking as this is the end where vital decisions are made. The new headend system has been tried, tested and certified to SIL2 safety standard to ensure the system will successfully fulfil its required safety functions.
The Jubilee Line project ran smoothly from start to finish.
All works were completed without any disruption to London Underground service.
The Jubilee Line Tunnel Ventilation project is Burnell’s largest installation to date.
Jubilee Line – Staircase Pressurisation