During construction of Crossrail, a significant proportion of construction measurement data was required to be added to a database known as the “Underground Construction Information Management System”. Could you provide me with a copy of this database covering all dates from inception until the present, as well as any database schemas or other documentation describing relevant data formats and/or means of querying the database? I appreciate that there may be a significant volume of data. If it assists, I can provide brand new (sealed) portable storage media, or details of a private & secure FTP site to which you can upload the data. Many thanks for your assistance. Please let me know if I can clarify further, or if small changes to scope would assist you in gathering the required information. The following Crossrail document number may be of use to you: “Underground Construction Information System – System Requirements” – CRL1-PDP-Z3-RRS-CRG03-00001

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Dear

TfL Ref: FOI-1405-1819

Thank you for your email received by Transport for London (TfL) on 21 August 2018, asking for a copy of Crossrail’s Underground Construction Information Management System (UCIMS).

Your request has been considered in accordance with the requirements of the Freedom of Information Act and our information access policy. I can confirm we do hold the information you require.

However, we are refusing your request under section 14(1) of the Act. After reviewing the scale of the task of providing and interpreting the database, we consider it would place an unreasonable burden on us. What makes the release of the UCIMS database burdensome and complicated is its scale. The database contains approximately 1 terabyte of data at the moment, and it continuously gathers more data. Making sense of this large amount of raw data would require significant work. The data on its own would not provide any of the support needed to interpret and understand it and it is this task in particular that would require significant resources and effort. Furthermore, this data is still being worked on and is not complete.

Our principal duty is to provide an effective transport service for London and we consider that answering this request would represent a disproportionate effort. It would be a significant distraction from our work managing the TfL network, requiring re-allocation of already limited resources and placing an unacceptable burden on the technical team. We do wish to clarify that whilst we consider that your request falls under section 14(1) of the FOI Act, this does not reflect a conclusion that it has been your intention to deliberately place an undue burden on our resources.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) guidance states that one of the indicators of a request which may fall under section 14(1) is that it “appears to be part of a completely random approach, lacks any clear focus, or seems to have been solely designed for the purpose of ‘fishing’ for information without any idea of what might be revealed.”

The ICO guidance provides the following examples of a ‘fishing expedition’ request which may fall under section 14(1) if it:

- Imposes a burden by obliging the authority to sift through a substantial volume of information to isolate and extract the relevant details;

- Encompasses information which is only of limited value because of the wide scope of the request;

- Creates a burden by requiring the authority to spend a considerable amount of time considering any exemptions and redactions.

We consider the burden of retrieving and interpreting the data would be disproportionate to the benefit of providing it. Therefore, we are refusing it under s.14 of the FOI Act. If you would like to re-submit a more specific request then we will, of course, consider it. For example, a request for a specific document. For example, we could provide you with the land survey data as a csv file which you might find useful. Please let us know if this is something you would be interested in.   

Please see the attached information sheet for details of your right to appeal.

Yours sincerely

Eva Hextall

FOI Case Officer

FOI Case Management Team

General Counsel

Transport for London

  

I would like to make a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

During construction of Crossrail, a significant proportion of construction measurement data was required to be added to a database known as the “Underground Construction Information Management System”.

Could you provide me with a copy of this database covering all dates from inception until the present, as well as any database schemas or other documentation describing relevant data formats and/or means of querying the database?

I appreciate that there may be a significant volume of data. If it assists, I can provide brand new (sealed) portable storage media, or details of a private & secure FTP site to which you can upload the data.

Many thanks for your assistance. Please let me know if I can clarify further, or if small changes to scope would assist you in gathering the required information.

The following Crossrail document number may be of use to you: “Underground Construction Information System – System Requirements” – CRL1-PDP-Z3-RRS-CRG03-00001

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