Crossrail project: Procuring infrastructure for London’s Elizabeth line

Abstract

This paper sets out the origins and approach to procurement on Crossrail, the development of the ‘six pillars’ of procurement and how these were deployed to deliver over £11 billion of capital spend over a 5 year period. Initial reservations about retrofitting the approach into the existing governance processes were overcome by demonstrating clear gains through forward planning, managing risk early in the process and promoting efficiencies in production. The approach allowed a 30% reduction in the procurement team size while delivering the same outputs. In addition, all critical key dates were met, there were no successful challenges and the scope was procured within budget estimates.