Dear All
You are invited to attend the next TC206-220 Monitoring Group meeting, the 5th Technical Presentatoin.
We are pleased to welcome Dr Nader Saffari, Professional Head Earthwork Structures & Geotechnical, Transport for London, who will be presenting a talk titled:
Date: Friday, 12 December 2025
Time: 09:00 10:30 (UK Time)
Presentation Title: Monitoring of Earth Structures on the LU Network
Talk Synopsis:
The earth structures on the London Underground (LU) network are over 80 years old with some as old as 150 years old. Most of the cuttings are formed in London Clay and the embankments were generally formed from the excavated material from London Clay cuttings. The original construction of these earth structures was not scientifically undertaken with over-steepened cuttings and poorly compacted embankment fill. Many of them have been showing signs of movement and past instabilities since the early 1990s. Over the last decade the impact of climate change and extreme weather events have become more frequent. This has led to severe flooding and disruption of some rail infrastructure including some injuries and a few fatalities. Therefore, railway infrastructure needs to be carefully managed, and LU has developed and operated a proactive risk-based Earth Structures (ES) asset management regime since the late 1990s which has delivered the key business objectives of improved asset safety, reliability, and availability, whilst delivering efficiency and cost savings. Detailed and deep monitoring of earth structures has provided improvements in the understanding of behaviour of the ES asset base as well as managing the risk of instability. This has allowed decisions to be undertaken with a greater degree of certainty resulting in significant cost savings being realised in the LU ES remediation programme without compromising the safety of the railway.
Dr Saffaris presentation will cover the scope of monitoring activities, data collection and analysis, and how this data is used to manage assets safely and effectively.
Please contract group leader Mr Hock Liong Liew (LindkedIn) for joining the talk.
