Crossrail chiefs also confirmed today that Morgan Sindall has won the £50m contract for the Pudding Mill Lane Tunnel Portal.

The awards mean all 21km of twin-bore tunnelling works for Crossrail have now been let.

Hochtief/Murphy will start work later this year on the £190m C310 – Thames Tunnel (Plumstead to North Woolwich) contract after winning out from a shortlist of:

· Joint Venture comprising: BAM Nuttall Ltd, Ferrovial Agroman (UK) Ltd, Kier Construction Ltd;
· Joint Venture comprising: Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Ltd, Alpine BeMo Tunnelling GmbH, Morgan Sindall (Infrastructure) plc, Vinci Construction Grand Projects;
· Joint Venture comprising: Costain Ltd, Skanska Construction UK Ltd, Bilfinger Berger Ingenieurbau GmbH Niederlassung Tunnelbau;
· Joint Venture comprising: Laing O’Rourke Construction Ltd, Strabag AG, Bouygues Travaux Publics

Vinci will also start work later this year on contract C315 for the Connaught Tunnel refurbishment worth £35m.

The firm beat off competition to win the job from:

· Joint Venture comprising: Hochtief Construction AG, J Murphy & Sons Ltd;
· BAM Nuttall Ltd; and
· Joint Venture comprising: VolkerFitzpatrick Limited, Barhale Construction

Around 21km of twin-bore tunnel will be constructed for Crossrail in total. Tunnelling activity will commence in late 2011 with the first tunnel boring machine (TBM) starting out on its journey in spring 2012.

The combined Crossrail tunnelling contracts are worth in the region of £1.5bn.

Further contracts worth in the region of £1.5bn will be awarded during 2011 including main construction contracts for new Crossrail stations in central London.

Crossrail has also implemented a new integrated delivery structure which sees Crossrail Limited, Project Delivery Partner Bechtel and Programme Partner Transcend working together as one organisation.

Both Bechtel and Transcend will “continue to play leading roles in the delivery of Crossrail.”

Cliff Mumm, formerly project director of Crossrail Central, has left the Crossrail project to take up a major new role with Bechtel in North America.

The new integrated structure places responsibility for construction progress along with the management of project risks that could affect delivery on the private sector contractors.

Rob Holden, Crossrail Chief Executive said: “Crossrail and our delivery partners Bechtel and Transcend have achieved significant progress to-date and together we are now gearing up for the intensive phase of construction that will commence with the start of main tunnelling next year.

“The award of the remaining tunnelling contracts is further evidence of the significant progress that Crossrail has made over the last year and shortly our tunnelling contractors will confirm the manufacturers for the tunnel boring machines needed to deliver Crossrail.”