NEWS |


HS2 delay, Euston revisions to add costs, says NAO


Implenia wins more work on Fornebu NORWAY – Implenia has won a second tunnelling package on Oslo’s Fornebu rail line. The Project K2D Skøyen-Vækerø contract


comprises around 1.2km of tunnelling, an escape tunnel and construction of the Skøyen subway station. The contractor is to start work later this


year and finish in 2025. Implenia is already building the first part


of the Fornebu Line, the 2.3km-long K2A Fornebu-Lysaker, due to be completed in late 2023. “This is a huge win for Implenia and


our Norwegian team, building on our experience in successfully managing large and complex infrastructure projects in Norway,” said Erwin Scherer, global head of tunnelling at Implenia. The 8km Fornebu Line is the largest


Above: HS2 Amersham vent shaft PHOTO CREDIT: HS2


UK – The Government’s two-year pause on parts of HS2 high-speed rail line will create additional costs and a potential higher price overall, according to the UK’s public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO). The programme change follows


mounting pressure on Government resources in an inflationary environment. NAO says warns that project costs would be pushed up by stopping and restarting work, contractual changes, and managing the project for longer. Meanwhile, tunnelling success


continues on HS2 with two TBMs having bored more than half of the project’s longest tunnels, located north of London, in the Chiltern hill,s passing Amersham shaft. In early March, the Government


announced a two-year strategic delay to extending HS2 north of Birmingham – to Crewe and Manchester, respectively. Also, it said the first phase would only see trains run from Birmingham as far as Old Oak Common, in west London, although it was committed to the terminus being at Euston, in central London, in future. Also in March, HS2 Ltd reported


Euston’s 10-platform design was more than budget, at £4.8bn (US$6.0bn). The Government-


6 | April 2023


ordered strategic pause also covers new works at over-budget Euston. NAO says the Department for


Transport (DfT) should use the pause at Euston “to develop a design that is affordable, deliverable and value for money” by working with the Euston Partnership, HS2 Ltd, Network Rail, Lendlease and local partners. Euston earlier drew NAO’s


attention in a 2020 report where complexity and design uncertainty was identified in an earlier design. The Oakervee Review underlined the issues and changes were ordered, scrapping much of the design work. DfT then established the Euston Partnership to bring together the different parties to improve matters. But NAO says the 2020 initiatives did not succeed. While the Government’s pause


on certain new works may give time to address the challenge at Euston and elsewhere, NAO warns that extra costs will come as a consequence. Elsewhere on HS2, the project


has produced innovations with cost and waste savings, such as with the steel rebar threading facility for the 880m-long cut and cover Copthall tunnel construction site. It was set up by the Skanska Costain Strabag JV.


subway tunnelling project in Norway for 50 years. The line passes through geology with


folding structures, faults, deep gouges, clay and low rock cover. A JV of Cowi and Multiconsult is


designing the line. In April 2022, Norwegian construction


and civil engineering firm Veidekke was appointed to build the Lysaker to Vækerø tunnel.


Rail underpass trial funding for hyperTunnel in Wales UK – hyperTunnel’s technology is to be trialled to build an underpass following a funding award from Europe’s first purpose- build rail innovation facility, the Global Centre of Rail Excellence (GCRE), in Wales. The grant is to support a feasibility study


of the underpass at using the system that hyperTunnel says is 10 times faster and up to 50% more economical than current cut- and-cover construction methods. hyperTunnel has a low-disruption


approach using AI, digital surveying and swarm robotics to 3D print a structure in the ground before excavation. The project was selected as one of 24


railway innovations to work on test sites in the first phase of a two-phase competition. The second funding round involves a


shortlist of 12 projects working on real sites in 2024. GCRE is under construction in Dulais


Valley and is to host world-class research, testing and certification of innovative new rail technologies, acting as an incubator for pioneering projects.


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