London Bridge Station is one of the oldest in London and has developed over many stages such that it currently operates on several levels and areas with complex congested interchange facilities. It is the UK’s fifth busiest station and handles about 120,000 passengers at peak time between 8.00am and 10.00am. It can become significantly overcrowded during this and other periods of time.
The project includes the redevelopment and reconfiguration of London Bridge Station including concourse with retail spaces, station accommodation, tracks and platforms, in order to provide an interim and new station layout that accommodates the passenger demand forecasts up to 2076 and to improve access to the station.
Further project details
1. What approach did you take in assessing risks and identifying adaptation measures to mitigate the risks?
Risks were assessed using a rating of probability and impact resulting in a rating between low and extreme.
Where possible risks were quantified in terms of their impact on the building under different climate scenarios.
Some adaptation ideas were generated at the CCA focus session held with the client and design team early in the process. Additional ideas were generated as the project progressed by the CCA team.
2. How have you communicated the risks and recommendations with your client? What methods worked well?
Risks and recommendations were communicated to the client using a combination of text, graphics and numerical data in presentation and discussion settings and more formally in printed reports.
The most mutually beneficial interactions were roundtable discussions of the issues, implications and likely solutions to the problem. The complexity, uniqueness and originality of the climate change risks meant that the pertinent issues can be lost in the weight of data and explanation.
3. What tools have you used to assess overheating and flood risks?
To assess comfort we have used TAS modelling software with future weather files provided by the Prometheus project at the University of Exeter.
Assessing flooding issues EPA flood map resources and the Environment Agency’s guidelines documents, BS 8515:2009, the RainCycle calculator for rainfall harvesting, CIRIA C644 Building Greener for guidance on green roofs and UKCP09 rainfall data.
Construction risks were assessed and informed by UKCP09 wind and rainfall data, BS 6399-2:1997 and BS8104:1992.
4. What has the client agreed to implement as a result of your adaptation work?
From the design analysis and climate change risk review the team has agreed to pursue the following measures as part of the strategy, pending the cost plan review:
- future improvements in concourse equipment efficiencies to reduce internal gains and lower temperatures
- design review of openable areas to facilitate sufficient natural ventilation air changes while avoiding adverse comfort effects of wind
- rainwater harvesting
- raising the level of mechanical and electrical equipment to minimise flood risk.
5. What were the major challenges so far in doing this adaptation work?
So far the adaptation work has run smoothly. We believe to realise value for the client there needs to be an emphasis on being able to quantify the impact of climate change scenarios to understand whether immediate or delayed investment is necessary. This can be done with some degree of certainty for most risks however some construction and water risks require further technical support to enable quantification and enable confident decision making.
The complexity of the station, the limited space available and the limits of the project budget meant that adding extra resiliency and redundancy was a challenge as was the co-ordination of rainwater harvesting pipework and green roof.
6. What advice would you give others undertaking adaptation strategies?
To some extent the station design is intrinsically resilient and it is worth noting why to highlight what could be done on other projects:
- sufficient openings for effective natural ventilation flow
- dual layered platform awning to limit the effect of radiant heat from exposed roof surfaces to platform occupants
- chiller (retail) and heat rejection capacity designed to 35°C.
