London Crossrail, Europe's largest construction project, 75% complete

Seventy-five percent of the Crossrail project, the biggest construction project in Europe and one of the largest single infrastructure investments ever undertaken in the UK has now been delivered on time and on budget.

But Crossrail is not just about tunneling. The $21 bn project is also a hotbed of innovations. The entire network was designed in a 3-D virtual environment so that once the railway is up and running, a version of this 3-D model will help managers monitor, from mobile devices, countless electrical components and systems across the network.

Already, the project is setting standards that are being adopted by other transport networks in the United Kingdom. These standards will furthermore provide field testing for digital technologies that could revolutionize construction in the future.

Robert Mair, the head of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Cambridge, in England, and a consultant to the project has said that the “Crossrail really is a digital railway.”