TRANSPORT | RAIL PROJECTS - HS2
HS2 - MOVING AHEAD HS2 is under scrutiny over time and cost. A reset is coming
While HS2 is a major transport project of many engineered parts, and is in no way limited to big civils, as often happens with many infrastructure projects the associated visuals regularly focus on showing tunnels. Civils are photo-friendly, sometimes large tunnels especially so, such as the many recently completed and celebrated long tunnel bores on the HS2 project. There is a flipside to the attention. Being so visible,
civils works can bear the brunt of assumptions about the overall performance of projects, even if the primary blame for problems of opening delays and rising costs arise elsewhere, for the most part. Decisions made early, and more conceptually, by others and well removed from the eventual hard graft of tunnelling in earth and rock.
Much, then, depends on how the game is set up. Even as risk management in civils has continued to
improve over years for detailed design, construction works and throughout supply chains, it is from the domains ruled by others - in organisations and management, and planning and procurement, and support or lack thereof - that the bigger risks to outcomes for an infrastructure project can emerge. And, so, HS2 rail project is under the spotlight again
over schedule delays and cost overruns. Another investigation is underway, only this time far more comprehensive for the multi-year, multi-dozens of billions of pounds rail project being built between London and Birmingham. It is to be overhauled and undergo a strategic “turnaround”. A radical reset. But it will be some time yet before the project’s
owner-operator, High Speed Two (HS2) Ltd, along with Government ministers, and officials in the project Sponsor, the Department for Transport (DfT), can better judge best when trains can start to run and at what final cost. After the opening date for HS2 became increasingly
uncertain along with the project’s outturn cost, last autumn the newly-elected Labour Government descended on the case and instigated an intervention. HS2 Ltd got a new chief executive, Mark Wild, who
was appointed at the end of 2024. He previously helped final delivery of another full-sized rail service involving many tunnels, the Elizabeth Line (Crossrail). For a rapid, initial assessment he consulted widely,
inside the project, with stakeholders and with other external parties, including those able to do their own review - such as James Stewart. The Government had appointed Stewart earlier to assess the performance of the DfT, civil service and previous government ministers in areas of governance and assurance of
26 | August 2025
major transport projects, principally looking at HS2 (see box panel). The Stewart Review came out in June this year, along
with the release of Wild’s initial assessment, which had been delivered in late March - only three months after his appointment. Also in June, Michael Brown was appointed as new Chair of HS2 Ltd, effective from July. Early in his overview letter to the Government,
Wild states a useful benchmark, concerning costs. All costs quoted were benchmarked to Q3, 2019 prices. Seems simple enough. Unfortunately, discussions and documents concerning multi-year infrastructure and energy projects, whether in the UK or internationally, often talk costs without stating clearly the benchmark year for reference of each. When talking across years that can become a confusion. Are they like-with-like comparisons? Most people naturally think about money in the value
of their own day. Without clear guidance, public and professional may struggle to weigh the financial figures and budgets arising from earlier times, and discussing those of the future. Not all documents are clear in this regard, to enable those comparisons to be clear. So, in simply and clearly stating the ‘Q3, 2019 prices’
benchmark, Wild provides a firm footing. Albeit briefly. For the initial discussion does not dive into financial analysis, for first there were bigger issues to highlight, from which all figures emerge. Benchmarks are important, especially with “collective
decision making” having been a key factor raised ion what went before, and will be to come. Clarity is needed, throughout, for all, to appreciate and discuss proper benchmarking of time and costs. There will be blizzards of figures produced in the coming months, all coming together to get firm picture on the past, present and options from which to decide what happens next. On Wild’s findings, first a note: it was initial only,
based upon an independent ‘top-down’ model; nailing a more detailed insight would need a wealth of data to get a better baseline, built from the ‘bottom-up’ and that needs months of effort, it is expected. Need such data and needing to much time to get it might surprise for a project well underway. Meantime, what was seen in the initial, ‘top-down’
view? Phase 1 of HS2 runs from London to Birmingham. The
initial section to open covers the majority of this section, from the inner edge of the capital, at Old Oak Common, to the north. According to the initial assessment, it cannot be opened for at least another eight years, most likely, as it is “not deliverable in the current window of 2029-2033.” The months needed now for extra data
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