The company building London’s super sewer has published its interim report giving an insight to the challenges of delivering a major project in 2020.

In the report, Tideway sets out continued progress on delivering the 25km tunnel under London despite working within social distancing guidelines and having paused almost all work at the start of the national lockdown in the spring.

In August, the company updated its cost and schedule estimate taking account of the impacts of the pandemic. That estimate, which added nine months to the programme and £233m to costs, is confirmed in the interim report, with no additional cost or programme changes. The project is expected to cost £4.1bn and will be completed in 2025.

Andy Mitchell, Tideway’s CEO, said: “Having to manage the progress of works during the pandemic has been a challenge beyond anyone’s expectations. Keeping our staff well both physically and mentally has been our first priority and secondly ensuring we continue with our task of cleaning up London’s river.

“We have achieved some major milestones so far this year, with the completion of the main tunnel drive in the western section and the central section drive due to complete before the end of this month. We have also continued to use the river to deliver the project, reducing our presence on London’s roads and helping with our overall ambition of minimising our disruption to the local communities in which we work.”

To hear more from Andy Mitchell on the impact of the pandemic, you can listen to Tideway’s podcast with its CEO here.

ENDS