ABSTRACT
The main road access into the centre of Heathrow is through a road tunnel connecting to the M4 motorway. The route from Paddington to the Heathrow Central Terminal Area and then on to Terminal 4 covers a distance of 27 kilometres. The first 19 kilometres utilise the existing main line from London to the west of England which runs east / west to the north of Heathrow. The team set up to review the construction included representatives from the client Heathrow Express, the contractor Balfour Beatty, the designers Mott MacDonald and the project insurers. The revised agreement was based on a tight construction programme and it was, therefore, essential that the designer was a part of the team to ensure that there was no delay in the supply of the design information through what had become essentially a “fast-track” programme.
