Oral history interview with Kim Kapur, Close-out Director, 2023
Main details
| Reference number | 2023/1137 |
|---|---|
| Dates | 20/07/2023 |
| Collection | |
| Object type |
|
| Topics | |
| Completeness | 59% |
-
Physical description
Item content Attribute Value Object title Oral history interview with Kim Kapur, 2023 -
Interview summary
Track 1 of 1 [01:16:01] Kim Kapur was born in 1977 in Leicester. Parents were business owners. Talks about moving around as a child. Didn't have any career aspirations at school. Explains early role in business management including with Institute of Professional Auditors. Moved to role at Cable and Wireless as project co-ordinator. Then worked for WorldCom (now Horizon) covering Germany and Italy. Then worked for Level Three Communications on sales and network migrations. Eventually started role at London Underground [00:05:00]. Talks about early role with PPP project. Became programme manager for LU (London Underground) station modernisation. Also worked on Cooling the Tube project. Mentions considering move to Thameslink but was told to speak to Rob Andrews, who was running LU Crossrail team at the time. Encouraged to stay to join team. Assurance process needed to be set up. Was at stage when development agreement had been signed. Started as Assurance Manager in 2008. Talks about gaining understanding of impact of Crossrail project on LU. Talks about moving to role as Senior Project Manager for handover in 2015-16. Explains what role involved. Continued to work on assurance. Talks about importance of this. Talks about mapping route for getting to the point of operating [00:10:00]. Describes process and all functions that were included. Explains that process got LU ahead of the game when communicating with Crossrail. Talks about relationship with Crossrail team. Mentions Mark Wild arriving as Managing Director of LU. Talks about showing him the route map [00:15:00]. Moved to role as Programme Manager for LU Crossrail team. Talks about getting LU stations ready for operations. Describes what makes 5 LU stations unique. Integration of Crossrail into LU systems. Talks about run up to 2018 delay announcement. Explains importance of Crossrail systems running through LU stations being ready including comms, CCTV. Mentions frustration of systems not being installed [00:20:00]. Talks about challenge of Crossrail programme working in silos. Mentions speaking to Simon Wright. Explains what wasn't completed at 2018. Talks further about delay announcement. Tells story of taking engineers to Broadway for meeting to discuss moving forward [00:25:00]. Working out what the minimum requirements were to enable opening. Turned these into statutory certifications. Ensuring stations would be safe for passengers and staff. Put LU team in a position where they could help Crossrail to deliver [00:30:00]. Comms was critical asset that wasn't ready in 2018. Talks about non-LU stations, different operating strategy. Reliant on receiving a digital railway, which LU wasn't. Talks about LU leaning on 160 years of experience of running a railway including major challenges such as fires and bombings. LU knows how to continue safe and efficient operations. Explains LU couldn't change operating model for sake of 5 Crossrail stations. Talks about tensions this created [00:35:00]. Mentions Mark [Wild] moving over to Crossrail. Describes change of reporting structure. Started reporting to Howard Smith. Talks further about complexity of integrating Crossrail assets into LU stations, compared to standalone Crossrail stations. Working as Head of Station Integration at this stage [00:40:00]. Describes culture and priorities post delay announcement. Teams of key roles at each station. Mentions t-minus process. Tells story of planner developing timeline for opening. Started with one line for operations but grew to cover all areas of delivery [00:45:00]. Describes pressure of run-up to opening. Wanting to work together to deliver, pushed team. Talks about Bond Street and reasons for delay with opening. Challenge with contractor and also tunnelling being behind. Describes developing overall opening strategy once Mark Wild had taken over. Earliest Opening Programme (EOP). Mentions Pradeep [Vasudev], Colin Brown, Chris Binns. Pushed need for live safety systems in place [00:50:00]. Explains looking at map to work out minimum stations that needed to be operable in central section to open line. Talks about Whitechapel also being behind schedule. Describes different states that stations could be to be operable. Mentions false starts with new opening dates. Explains the planning for Bond Street to be delayed. Describes how focus shifted towards Bond Street post-opening [00:55:00]. Applied for role as Close Out Director. To be in place once Mark Wild and Jim Crawford had finished in their roles. Appointed in early 2022. Explains how previous role had shifted once Whitechapel had been handed over to LU. Describes how approach was different to get Bond Street open. Talks about Jim [Crawford] staying in role. Role then changed to Delivery Director. Talks about bringing Dave Lock as project manager from Whitechapel to Bond Street. Explains there being no tier one contractor on Bond Street at that point [01:00:00]. Some people from Whitechapel team also moved across. Bond Street opened on Andy Byford's last day as Commissioner at TfL in October 2022. Reflects on how Bond Street was delivered [01:05:00]. Talks about support from senior managers. Talks about leaving Crossrail in April 2023 when final commissioning was completed. Explains how role still included Close Out Director. Creating close out strategy for Crossrail as a company. Included IT system, HR, contracts with staff. Over 400 contracts to close. Describes it as great fun. Now works as Stations Client Director for phase one of HS2 [High Speed 2]. Explains remit of role. Reflects on learnings from Crossrail including not forgetting the operator [01:10:00]. Talks about Elizabeth line exceeding expectations. Reflects on stations looking like artist pictures. How excited passengers were. Talks about affection for the line and people who worked on it. Talks about how impressed HS2 colleagues are of what was achieved on Crossrail. Ends with reflecting on importance of sharing experience with others and owning the whole from the beginning. End of recording [01:16:01] Please note: this is a summary of the full original recording rather than the edited web version -
People involved
Role Person(s) involved Interviewer Jen Kavanagh, 20/07/2023 -
Biography
Attribute Value Biography Kim Kapur worked on the Crossrail project on behalf of London Underground (LU), ensuring that the Elizabeth line stations that would be operated by LU were fully integrated and ready for operation. -
Associated companies, people and places
Places Interview location Podium office, Euston, 20/07/2023
Interview extracts
Crossrail […] were building these brand-new stations adjacent to the existing LU stations. But they were going to be operated by LU as a single complex, so at some point they have to be joined together and at some point they have to be integrated.
Extract 1: LU integration
-
Transcript: LU integration
Things changed and I became the programme manager for the LU (London Underground) Crossrail team, so there wasn’t a head of LU Crossrail team at that time. So I was it. I was getting on with it, just getting prepared for this 2018 that was coming. Mark realised that I knew a hell of a lot about the interface and understood how it interacted with LU and what it meant for us. Also knew that I was the one getting us ready, that was my job to get – LU needed to be ready to accept and get in and operate and maintain these stations, which meant we needed to get staff ready, we had to get maintenance ready and business ready, ‘cos these were huge extensions to our existing stations. Now the one thing I and my team and the engineers knew was the five LU stations were unique to the others because what Crossrail were doing was they were building these brand-new stations adjacent to the existing LU stations. But they were going to be operated by LU as a single complex, so at some point they have to be joined together and at some point they have to be integrated. Now you can build something in isolation up to a point, but then there comes a time where you have to bring it together. And that bit was not very well understood or understood at all really if you like in parts of Crossrail, but we knew and we were, hmmm, this is not going to work. Now, I also had a part of my team that did some delivery and we had already said look we’ll do some of the enabling works around bringing the comms systems together, that kind of thing. But we ended up taking a lot more on because it just made sense for us to do it. I certainly didn’t want anybody else coming into an LU station and messing with it while we’re trying to operate it and keep the railway running and integrate. So that careful planning and doing the actual work of the integration, I wanted the control of it. It put me on the critical path, but I think it was the right thing to do to have the control of that.
Extract 2: Preparing for opening
-
Transcript: Preparing for opening
So Bond Street was always this outlier and it was always late, it was behind because the tunnelling had arrived late and you know, there were challenges with the contractor at the time and the – I don’t know, there was loads of stuff going on that just – it just was always behind. I think the tunnelling triggered most of it. Anyway, while I was doing the head of station integration job, obviously we were focused on which stations are coming first and that kind of thing and working through the T-minus. You see before that, before we even got to T-minus, we had done this exercise when Mark [Wild] arrived and also I’d moved over to Howard [Smith], Mark had arrived and he went, Right time out, need to take some time out, we need to come up with what this opening strategy is, we can’t do a big bang opening, it doesn’t work. Well big bangs don’t work, it’s progressive, it always has to be. And he went, Right I need early - well, we called it the Earliest Opening Programme and this EOP was not just an output, which was the sort of strategy for opening the plan that we sort of devised, which was this phased opening approach, which is what we ended up doing. But it was also a collection of people that would come together, so he had Pradeep, you know there was others, you know, Chris – was it Chris Binns? Maybe Chris Binns, Colin Brown, people like that, you know, me from a station’s perspective and an IM (Information management) perspective. You know there was – not everyone, there was a group of us that were brought together, assembled to sort of go away and figure it out, how is this going to happen, how do we do this? So, you know, we had little off-shoot groups doing stations and this and that. And I used my minimum requirements to define that fact we needed the light safety systems in place, the fire, the comms, the – you know, the PA, the radio, so that helped because it meant that I could get that in there to say you can’t do this without that, it’s absolutely critical, so that started to take shape. But at that point we knew – and all the assurance exercises had been happening and we were getting all the data back explaining where things were in terms of the stations – where they actually were – not just in terms of physical state, but sort of from a certification, testing, commissioning, that kind of thing. And what transpired was, you know, we were actually looking at the map of the Elizabeth line going right, well we can’t do without Paddington, absolutely must have Paddington. Well Bond Street’s not going to happen, that’s way behind, so we don’t have Bond Street. But we’ll get – we have to have then Tottenham Court Road, then – well Farringdon, well we could do Farringdon. Liverpool Street’s behind in, you know, there was a few things that we were behind on at that time, well okay so we could. But then Farringdon it’s ahead, but we’re not sure, it looks more finished than it actually is behind the scenes. So there was this well okay Farringdon or Liverpool Street we could do.