In 2008, members of BLP helped spearhead the business development and project positioning and procurement efforts to procure one of the largest transportation construction projects in modern history; the $22BN Cross London Rail project. The winning team was the Transcend consortium, the name chosen to represent three of the World’s leading consulting engineering firms; Denver based CH2M HILL, Los Angeles based AECOM and London based Nichols Group.

The Transcend team beat two other short-listed teams namely, San Francisco based Bechtel Ltd and New York based, Parsons Brinckerhoff.

Cross Rail comprises 73 miles of modern rail design from Heathrow Airport on the west side of London through new, twin-bore, 13-mile tunnels under central London to Shenfield and Abbey Wood on the city’s east side.

The line increased rail transportation capacity across the Greater London Area, to 1.5 million people, reducing commuting distance of London’s key business districts to other major arterial transportation routes to 60 minutes and increasing capacity of the city’s transportation network by 10 percent. At its peak, 36,000 pp/h use the line in each direction with class 345 type trains carrying up to 1,500 passengers at a time.