East West Rail Phase 1

The East-West Rail Phase 1 project saw the upgrade of a single-track railway to a 100-mph twin track between Oxford and Bicester, building two new stations and extending the line at Bicester to join Birmingham to the London Marylebone Line.

RSK provided all environmental services to the project, allocating a full-time environment and consents manager to the project who was responsible for obtaining all environmental consents and for the strategic environmental coordination of the project. RSK’s team of landscape managers oversaw significant lineside vegetation removal to make space for the additional track being added to the route. Essential support was provided to ensure that vegetation was removed in an appropriate way, minimising the risk to ecology.

RSK’s landscape team have played a pivotal role since the beginning of the project, including landowner consultations, landscape design, contract preparation for line side, community and ecological mitigation projects. Supervision of the landscape implementation works was completed in 2018 and RSK are currently monitoring a three-year maintenance contract. RSK’s landscape, ecology and the arboricultural teams were responsible for designing the replacement vegetation and enhancement ensuring the correct balance was achieved between local stakeholder requirements and the requirements of the operational rail.

Overall, twenty-nine detailed landscape plans, ranging from urban environments, such as Oxford Parkway Station, to rural habitat creation and amenity landscapes, were designed and implemented. There are five sites along the Bicester to Oxford corridor containing Great Crested Newts. To comply with the Natural England license requirements, these sites have site-specific design elements to provide suitable habitats. These include aquatic planting and the provision of refugia and hibernacula. All of these sites are connected through the creation of a green corridor along the track contributing to the green infrastructure and benefiting flora and fauna communities, with monitoring of vegetation management processes over time, collecting and storing data via ArcGIS online.

RSK’s client, Carillion Buckingham Group Joint Venture (CBJV) was also responsible for providing strategic stakeholder engagement and dealing with community liaison matters arising during the design, build and hand back of the core works. This aspect of the work was delivered by RSKs in-house Communications team. The project devised, coordinated and delivered a stakeholder management plan that used a number of communication channels including websites, social media, telephone helpline, community meetings, technical workshops and home visits. Through this community investment plan, the project worked with several local community groups and schools with wide-ranging interests with an aim to improve or enrich the lives of people of all ages living near or close to the railway line and the new stations.