Interview: 2020 review author Sir Douglas Oakervee on HS2's future

With the eastern and northern legs of HS2 cancelled since the Oakervee Review into the line was published in 2020, Peter Pilsner talks to Sir Douglas Oakervee - former HS2 Chairman, civil engineering consultant, and author of the review - about what happens next for HS2.

In this article:

• Sir Douglas Oakervee critiques HS2’s governance and overengineering, citing insufficient design maturity and reliance on external consultants.
• He advocates for simplified design standards, streamlined station integration, and reconsideration of high-speed alignments to control costs.
• Recent governance changes, including new leadership and ministerial oversight, provide hope for completing HS2 phases effectively.

Sir Douglas Oakervee is no stranger to major projects such as HS2.

He attended night school to gain his first engineering qualification, and he was a pupil of the highly respected Civil Engineer, James Rennie.

In his mid-career, he set up his own engineering design and project management company in Hong Kong. The company was a member of a consortium led by Babtie - one of the key designers of London Underground’s Jubilee Line extension in the early 1990s.

He had previously been chief tunnel engineer and construction manager for the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway, and in 1991 he became Project Director for the new Hong Kong International Airport, built on a man-made island in the South China Sea. He was responsible for the design, procurement, construction and commissioning of the new Airport.

On his return to the UK, he became President of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and shortly afterwards he was appointed Executive Chairman of the Crossrail project between 2005 and 2009.

But it’s his work on HS2 which has brought Oakervee into the public eye.

It was Oakervee, as a former non-executive chairman of HS2 Ltd, that Boris Johnson turned to when he needed to deliver on a promise made during his bid to become leader of the Conservative Party.

With HS2 still highly controversial and with costs rising fast, Johnson had committed to a review of the high-speed network. And after winning the Conservative leadership election and thus becoming Prime Minister, he needed to deliver on that commitment.

Previously, as Mayor of London, Johnson had worked with Oakervee on studies connected with the Thames Estuary Airport project. Once Johnson was in 10 Downing Street, Sir Douglas was seen as a natural choice to lead the review of HS2.

But there were concerns about the appointment. Anti-HS2 campaigners considered that as a former HS2 chairman, Oakervee would effectively be ‘marking his own homework’.

“In fairness to Boris, he hadn’t realised that. He knew me as Crossrail chairman, but he hadn’t really picked up that I’d been in HS2,” Oakervee recalls.

Oakervee actually had quite a short spell at Crossrail, being chairman for just 16 months.

“I wasn’t in it very long, mainly because I didn’t agree with a lot of the proposals.

“I reluctantly agreed to stay until the Hybrid Bill was submitted. The moment that happened, I left.”

Having chaired Crossrail and helped put together the Hybrid Bill for that project, Oakervee was an ideal choice to do the same thing at HS2.

“But I fell out with senior officers at the Department for Transport over the speed and the standards. Then we came to a mutual decision that it would be best if I left. I was never an advocate of the way it was being presented.”

Echoing the findings of a recent report on HS2 by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), which was critical that designs hadn’t been allowed to mature, Oakervee was concerned at the time about then-Transport Secretary Chris Grayling’s enthusiasm, once Royal Assent had been received.

He suggests that Grayling wanted to press ahead with the project as quickly as possible, calling for ‘spades in the ground’.

“The nonsense was that Grayling clearly didn’t appreciate that the design, as contained in the Act, was for planning and land acquisition, but not the detailed design enabling construction. It would appear he had not been briefed sufficiently.”

The ICE report also stated that technical aspects of the project were outsourced to contractors, and that there was an increasing reliance on consultants. Oakervee agrees.

“I’ve done some very big projects in my life, but I’ve always had my own project management team and maintained absolute control over design management, keeping to the budget and resisting any recourse to the continency fund. I’ve never outsourced it.

“And when I was doing Crossrail, that’s what I wanted to do. But government had absolutely no appetite to do that, and wanted to use consultants on the basis that you’d have a project management team, and then when you came to the end, you’d get rid of them.”

Oakervee maintains that it’s normal on major projects around the world to have an ‘in-house’ project management team.

He acknowledges that he’s not been closely involved with the HS2 project for some time, but his view is still much the same as it was when his report was published in February 2020.

It concluded that the original rationale for HS2 still held, in that it would mean more capacity and greater reliability on the railway.

It found that there were no comparable alternative plans, and that upgrading existing lines would mean years of closures.

He was also concerned that scrapping HS2 would spook the whole supply chain industry and have serious consequences for, what (at the time, according to his report) was “a fragile construction industry”.

Following last year’s scrapping of HS2 Phase 2 from Birmingham to Manchester, and the pausing of the Old Oak Common to Euston section on Phase 1, the Railway Industry Association (RIA), which represents the rail supply chain, said it was “extremely disappointed” at the government announcement, dubbing what was left of the project the “Acton to Aston shuttle”.

Oakervee suggests RIA’s description is quite accurate: “It did make me chuckle when I saw it, because it is true. That’s what we’re left with.

“The business case for that doesn’t stack up at all. And it doesn’t provide the enhanced capacity you need, really.

“The other thing is: why would you want to go to Old Oak Common and then get on a train from Euston and get to Birmingham at the same time as if you’d have taken the West Coast Main Line out of Euston?”

Not surprising then, that in the recent Budget, Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave the go-ahead for tunnelling to Euston to restart.

Oakervee describes the scrapping of Phase 2 as “disastrous”. And like many, he maintains that construction of the line should have started in Manchester and worked southwards, instead of the other way round.

“The thing that was really holding that up was the lack of capacity between Euston and Rugby, and they needed to increase that capacity as quickly as possible. That was the driving factor, for starting in the South.”

The Oakervee Review made a series of recommendations - some of which were acted upon, while others weren’t.

It suggested pausing the eastern leg for a rethink, but instead the route was effectively scrapped.

There was also a recommendation that despite the cost, continuing to Euston was vital.

Another conclusion from Oakervee was that one organisation should be responsible for the development of Euston - and that organisation should not be HS2 Ltd.

“They weren’t there to build a new city in Euston, as is intended. They were there to build a railway. Others could have built Euston to the spec that HS2 required for its station, and obviously HS2 would have brought the tracks in, but not mess around with the way they have because it’s been an absolute disaster so far.”

That’s something that’s not yet happened. But with the recent announcement by former Transport Secretary Louise Haigh about closer scrutiny of the project, it is clearly still an option.

Oakervee also thinks there are fundamental issues still to be dealt with when the project restarts: “I’ve made it known to the Department for Transport that there can only ever be one Euston station, not two. We’re talking about building an HS2 station, then later rebuilding the existing station. It’s absolute nonsense. There has to be one station. You might phase it, but you have to design it as one. You can’t have two.”

Like many, Oakervee was also critical of what he called the “gold-plated standards” being followed by HS2 Ltd.

“This country doesn’t need a 400kph railway - the cities are too close. They’ve already dropped it to 360kph. I would have thought 280 or 300 would have been fine, which would have meant the track alignment, both vertical and horizontal, could have been quite different to what they have on the 400kph [248mph] alignment.”

One of his recommendations was to go back and look at whether slab track was too ambitious. And that’s exactly what’s happening on the alternative plan for the cancelled Phase 2 to Manchester, put forward by Metro Mayors Andy Burnham and Richard Parker.

Published in September, their plan looks at running slower trains on the proposed HS2 alignment. Dubbed by some as HS2-light, it envisages conventional track construction that would reduce the cost, when compared with the price tag for high-speed rail.

Publication of the Oakervee Review appeared to be delayed after completion, causing much frustration for the man who put it together. His report was finished in November 2019, but finally came out in February 2020.

There were also issues relating to Lord Tony Berkeley, who had been appointed as vice-chairman of the committee overseeing the review.

Known for his views against HS2, Berkeley refused to endorse the final report and instead issued his own ‘dissenting report’ which proposed spending money on projects in the North and the Midlands, including Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) and the Midlands Rail Hub.

His report also suggested integrating HS2 Phase 2b with NPR - something that now looks set to happen if the Metro Mayors get their way.

Oakervee suggests that the governance of the project has been completely wrong. He cites organisations such as the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA) and the National Infrastructure Commission, both of which have drawn together highly qualified people to produce insightful reports.

“The IPA does its job well and is very good at telling you where you went wrong, but rarely does anything to put you on the right road,” he says.

He draws comparisons from his work on the new Hong Kong International Airport, where things were very different. The Government Secretaries whose departments were directly involved were appointed to the Board, and matched by captains of industry and commerce.

“They knew how to do things, and the executive directors were answerable to them. You were really put through your paces, and in no case could a government permanent secretary say he didn’t know, because they were at the top table throughout.

“There was much more integration than there is here, which probably accounts for nearly all of Hong Kong’s projects being on time and within budget.”

One of the Oakervee Review recommendations that wasn’t followed has proved to have been a good decision, in the light of last year’s scrapping of the northern leg.

The review had suggested scrapping the Handsacre link, which connects HS2 to the West Coast Main Line north of Birmingham. Although under original plans there would have been a connection at Crewe, the Handsacre link would have allowed trains travelling via Stoke and Stafford to access HS2, cutting journey times from those places.

Oakervee says: “Handsacre was needed before Phase 2a was completed, but after that its use was quite limited. It was a very expensive junction and going through areas of high environmental interest. For one or two trains a day after you’d completed the whole thing, I just didn’t think it was worth it. I was assuming that they’d follow on with Phase 2a up to Crewe, more or less straightaway.”

Now, as history will record, you can never assume those things. And for now, the Handsacre link is seen as vital in connecting services from further north to the high-speed line.

And on recent reports that Birmingham’s Curzon Street station will be built with seven platforms, but that only four of them will be used now that the northern leg has been cancelled, Oakervee maintains that this makes sense.

“Curzon Street was designed for the full system up to Manchester. So, if you have your Aston to Acton shuttle, you just don’t need all those platforms. They’re now being built, so I think it would be short-sighted not to make passive provision for them, even if you don’t build them.”

He also agrees with the Metro Mayors that whatever comes next to provide more capacity on the West Coast Main Line, north of Birmingham, should be built on the former route of HS2 Phase 2a. However, he’s concerned about funding and suggestions that the private sector will pay for the new line.

“There may be a certain amount of interest in it, but I don’t see a vast interest unless they’re getting access charges. But then that calls into question: where the hell is Great British Railways in all this?”

On costs, Oakervee’s view was that part of the reason HS2 was so over-engineered was to provide the capacity for 18 trains per hour out of Euston, because that’s what made the business case and met HM Treasury rules.

But do any other countries achieve such a high rate of services? The answer, according to Oakervee, is no!

“That’s where Tony Berkeley and I were in total agreement. We were saying 14 trains an hour is more likely. You’ll be able to achieve that.

“But of course, once you put 14 in the equation, the whole business case collapsed. So, to my mind, that’s where the big fudge was. But there was a lot of pressure to get over the magic rules.”

Part of the reason appears to be about capturing more of the benefits of building new transport infrastructure, and what can and cannot be included.

Says Oakervee: “On Crossrail, Bridget Rosewell [Chief Economist and Chief Economic Adviser to the Greater London Authority)] and I spent three years urging HM Treasury to recognise the financial benefits of agglomeration.

“We said: look what Crossrail is going to do for east London - it will transform it. Of course, it did in terms of property prices and all the other taxes that were coming in through things such as conveyancing, etc.

“Nothing to do with Crossrail, apparently, but it really has everything to do with Crossrail in my view! Thankfully the Green Book, used by the Treasury, has been changed a bit since then.”

So, what happens next with HS2? Costs clearly have to be brought under control, and Oakervee is full of praise for the strengthening of the Board and new executive management at HS2 Ltd.

“I think it’s quite good news that Mark Wild will take over as CEO. Mark will have a hell of a job on his hands. Alan Over is the current Director General. I did quite a bit of work with him when I did the review. I have great faith in him.”

Oakervee believes the new governance and oversight measures announced in the Autum Budget by the Chancellor and to be introduced by Louise Haigh are to be applauded.

“The involvement of the Rail Minister, Lord Peter Hendy, is also excellent news because he really understands the issues at stake. And apart from having been the former chairman of Network Rail, he worked with me as a member of the Oakervee Review committee.”

Oakervee indicates that he has confidence that with the restructuring of HS2, the improved accountability and governance, together with more direct involvement at ministerial level, HS2 will bring cost and delivery back under control.

He considers it reasonable to expect that the high-speed line between Euston and Birmingham Curzon Street will be completed in a cost-effective way.

He also hopes that the government, when it has completed further reviews, will be able to agree to the Metro Mayors proposals to progress the route to Manchester.