57 Years Later - Innovation Continues at Bank Station

September 2017

On the 27th September 1960, Europe’s first travellator opened at Bank Underground Station reducing the travel time between platform and street from 10 minutes to just 6. Nearly 60 years on, Bank Station is again the focus of innovative developments through combining the knowledge and skills of contractors and suppliers.

At OnSite Support, we always encourage everyone in the construction industry to share knowledge and challenges they are facing so that together we can work to overcome them. We also make a habit of practising what we preach, so we sent some of our best men to Bank Station to meet with Dragados and discuss the issues they are presently facing in their working environment.

The result was a very rapid exposure to the testing environment in which Dragados are working, and an understanding of work methodologies involved. Several improvement opportunities were identified and safety issues which were being faced can now be more comprehensively reviewed. There is no substitute for seeing the challenges on site in person, and the developments which will stem from this relatively routine visit will have impacts across the construction industry, some obvious in the form of specialised PPE for tunnelling tasks, and others more subtle such as risk awareness and how to monitor them more comprehensively on site, as well as remotely.

Embodying a famous saying of Henry Ford’s, “Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” We are indebted to Dragados for facilitating the visit. We look forward to seeing the benefits of it roll out across the industry with them as a pioneer in the products and systems emanating from it and welcome engagement from anyone in the industry aiming to improve the lives of those we serve.