Successful delivery of the complex array of tunnels and marine works for the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is down to “relentless collaboration”, Balfour Beatty project director Roger Frost tells NCE.

Hinkley Point C project client Nuclear New Build (NNB) appointed Balfour Beatty to deliver the marine works package, which involves three tunnels stemming from the Somerset power station out under the Bristol channel – two 3.5km intake tunnels and a 1.8km outfall tunnel.

Each tunnel is then being connected to two shafts that stretch 20m up to the seabed where they are capped off by intake heads and outfall heads.

The first tunnel boring machine (TBM) on the job was launched in September 2019. By the time NCE visited the Hinkley Point C site in early October, all three TBMs had completed their drives, the tunnels were lined and Balfour Beatty engineers were working on excavating and lining the adit tunnels to connect the main tunnels to the shafts.

Frost joined as project director for Balfour Beatty on Hinkley Point C four years ago and is in no doubt as to the importance of the job that the teams – including all the other contractors such as ByLor (Bouygues Laing O’RourkeJV) – are doing.

“Yes, it’s exciting to do all the civil engineering, but we’re actually here for the country, because we’re generating power,” he says. “People tend to lose track of how important power is; phones, schools, hospitals.

“I’ve been very fortunate in my career to have built 14 hospitals for the United Kingdom and what you realise is they’re hungry for power 24 hours a day.”