Sustainability

Overview

The redevelopment of Birmingham New Street will transform the station to be fit for the 21^st Century and a place that its passengers and the people of Birmingham deserve; one that reflects its modern and forward thinking architecture and people.  The exterior of the station will be clad in a stunning new stainless steel façade and the construction of a huge atrium will allow natural light to flood into the station concourse.

As well as delivering a world class station, the team delivering Birmingham Gateway are working to ensure the sustainability of both the construction process and the rebuilt station.

When Birmingham New Street station was built in the 1960s, grey reinforced concrete was a prominent feature in building design and has remained the recognised face of the station and the Pallasades shopping centre above for over 40 years.

Refurbishing a 1960s structure to meet modern day sustainability requirements can bring some challenges, however the Gateway project team have been working hard to ascertain green credentials for the project through various recycling and energy monitoring initiatives and working closely with the designers and regulatory bodies.

Key facts

In the completed station, we'll be using:

• Low energy but high efficiency lighting
• 60% of the rainwater harvested from the stainless steel façade to flush all of the stations toilets
• Efficient water spray taps for water conservation
• Energy efficient lifts and escalators
• Sub-metering for all water, heating and cooling to monitor energy consumption
• Natural daylight for the concourse and natural ventilation where possible
• Responsibly sourced materials

Current update

To create the space for a new station concourse, we've recently finished removing over 7500 tonnes of concrete from a disused car park adjacent to the existing station.  All the waste concrete removed from this site was taken to a waste recycling facility for use on other projects. 98% of the material from the recently demolished Stephenson Tower has also been recycled.  The project is aiming to recycle/re-use 85% of the non-hazardous waste material as a minimum of which we have currently exceeded in elements of the demolition works.

The Gateway project has also installed a sub-metering system which allows an accurate method of measuring water, electricity and carbon usage across our worksite on a day to day basis. This helps us to ensure we meet our targets to reduce consumption throughout our works. 

We're working on delivering a new office building for our colleagues at Cross Country Trains that will have many green features such as a green roof, solar photovoltaic panels to generate power and solar thermal panels for hot water generation. This building is aiming to achieve a BREEAM (Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method) rating of 'Excellent'.

The station itself has been targeted to achieve a BREEAM rating of 'very good' and this has already been achieved for the design stage. The project team are now monitoring construction activity to ensure that we maintain this rating in our next stages of delivery.

Here's a summary of some of the key information:

Partnerships

Network Rail and the lead consultant Atkins, has been working closely with many external bodies throughout the project, including The Carbon Trust, WRAP (Waste & Resource Action Programme) and NISP (National Industrial Symbiosis Programme).

The result of this collaborative effort has been the achievement of a 'Very Good' BREEAM rating for the design stage; the world's leading and most widely used environmental assessment method for buildings and a fantastic achievement for an infrastructure project in the heart of a city.

BREEAM has become the principle measure used to describe a building's environmental performance and Network Rail is dedicated to ensuring we employ best practice for sustainability measures where we can.

Keeping traffic off Birmingham's streets

Working around an operational railway can be a challenge in itself; however it also provides a very accessible resource that the project team use to transport material into and from site, without having to use lorries around our busy city centre.

Every week, the train makes two journeys into the construction site from a logistics depot in Bordesley, on the outskirts of the city and is expected to keep 10,000 lorry journeys off Birmingham's roads throughout the life of the project!