The Southbank Place development: tunnel movement predictions and monitoring performance

Abstract

The Southbank Place project comprised the redevelopment of the UK headquarters of the Shell company (formerly known as the Shell Centre) in the Waterloo area of London. The project included demolition of all structures within the site except for the iconic tower building, the local extension of the existing basement and the construction of eight new mixed-use buildings. London Underground's (LU) Bakerloo and Northern Line running tunnels pass beneath the site. The excavation of the basement and construction of the Shell Centre in the late 1950s caused movements of the underlying Bakerloo Line tunnels that were much larger than expected. The monitoring of these tunnels between 1958 and 1995 has provided a classic case history for the behaviour of London Clay. The proposed redevelopment offered an opportunity to analyse and monitor the behaviour of London Underground tunnels over a period of 60 years and two phases of significant construction. The paper presents the back analysis of the historical monitoring of the Bakerloo Line tunnels and the calibration of a sophisticated finite element model. The model was subsequently used to predict the impact of the redevelopment on the tunnels as part of the assurance procedure with LU.