Ground movement monitoring at King's Cross Station. London

The redevelopment of King's Cross Station in central London includes the construction of a new Northern Ticket Hall and tunnelled connections to existing infrastructure. These works are to be carried out beneath a congested site including Grade I and II listed buildings, and heavy rail and road traffic both above and below ground (three London Underground lines). Arup and Soldata were required to design and implement a monitoring solution that would assist with the management of the risks. A direct and unique contract from the client to the instrumentation specialist was set up in order to keep a tight control on the data quality, and to ensure an optimal distribution of the results. A real-time system, based on an automated total station network combined with standard monitoring methods (inclinometers, precise levelling, etc.), was chosen. The detailed design and optimisation of such a system involves estimating the precision based on site-specific information. Since installation on site, the site monito...