St Pancras International Control Room
Eurostar
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When Eurostar moved its operations from Waterloo Station across to the new St Pancras International Station it used the opportunity to combine two seperate control rooms into one. The two control rooms seperately looked after the train crews and the security of the passenger terminal itself. The Eurostar team had done some good initial work on designing the control room but wanted additional expertise to build on this and develop the design.
Project
We were commissioned to provide an ergonomics advisory programme to the control room design project. Our scope was to support the design development through the conduct of a full-scale mock-up trial and then to provide specific ergonomics advice on desk design, room layout (including circulation, maintenance access and DDA requirements), storage furniture and on the working environment of the room (especially maximising natural daylight).
Implementation
CCD undertook extensive visits to each of the existing two control rooms so that we could understand, in detail, the operations, the roles, the equipment used, etc. This was brought together into an Operational Specification for the new combined control room.
We conducted the mock-up trial in three phases: (a) detailed initial review with the Eurostar team, (b) a period during which staff were invited to visit the mock-up, and (c) a final review with the project team and staff representatives to finalise the design.
Outcomes
We were able to help the Eurostar project team involve the staff in developing a successful design for the new control room. This was important as the staff were going through a major change in both location and ways of working. We were also able to help them get the most from the space. The control room went live in November 2007.
In 2008, we were commissioned by Eurostar to conduct an In-Service Review of the operational control room. This review was successful in highlighting some issues that had emerged in the six months of operation and made practical recommendations for addressing these problems. These included improvements to the way equipment was accommodated inside workstations to use the space better and some re-design of workstations to allow certain roles to work more closely together to reflect the emerging understanding of their collaboration.
We have supported Eurostar in getting a new control room up and running and have continued that help to further improve and develop the room as they learn more and improve their operations.