Rail Minister outlines support for HS2 CEO as he carries out 'reset'

Rail Minister Lord Hendy has given the new HS2 Ltd Chief Executive his backing as he carries out a ‘reset’ of the project.

Mark Wild took over as CEO in December, and has embarked on a new ‘reset’ in a bid to understand the costs and problems that have beset HS2.

Speaking at the breakthrough on the Bromford Tunnel in Washwood Heath, Birmingham, Hendy - who will be speaking at this year's Rail Live on day two (June 19) - said of Wild: “The great thing about Mark was he retrieved Crossrail from a bad place. He got it open as the Elizabeth line.

“He knows about big projects, and he knows about big projects that, frankly, haven't been going very well. So, we're looking at him to get it back on track, to tell us how long it's going to take, how much it's going to cost and when it's going to be open.”

The full reset of HS2 is expected to take a year to complete.

Speaking to RAIL earlier this month, Wild said: “We’ve got one shot at this and I’m very very confident. We need to space to do it, which we are getting currently, and we need to see the quality of work," he said.

“But everyone understands it’s worth doing once.”

Earlier this month RAIL revealed how a report from Wild, as part of his preliminary assessment of the scheme, said the cost of completing the section between Birmingham Curzon Street and Old Oak Common has risen to £81 billion (at 2019 prices) with work not expected to be completed until 2036 at the earliest, with 2039 more likely.

Despite the delays and cost overspends, the reset is necessary to understand what has been going wrong, Wild explained.

“HS2 had become discontinuous. Whenever you build something, whether that is submarine or a railway, things get delayed. That is what happened with HS2 - the civil engineering has got delayed. So, that means systems engineering is waiting for civils which means that things become parallel and that needs to be corrected.”

He also said HS2 was “five years behind schedule, adding: “We should be 70%-80% complete by now. So, what are we complete? Well, we don’t actually know because the project has become disconnected from reality. It’s possibly a third complete.”

Work to connect the project back to reality is continuing however, with Wild and the wider team looking at culture, productivity and efficiency across the whole project, so HS2 can accurately provide the DfT and the government a “reliable route to the finish line” as Wild puts it.

Bromford Tunnel

The Bomford Tunnel breakthrough on May 8 marked the end of 22 months of digging for one of the Tunnel Boring Machines that has completed a 3.5-mile journey from Water Orton in Warwickshire.

Jules Arlaud, Balfour Beatty VINCI’s Tunnelling Director said: “It is an important milestone because it's the end of a long process which started years ago. We had slightly less than two years of tunnelling, but of course it's coming at the end of a long chain of design, preparation and so on.”  

The tunnelling team had to navigate under the Park Hall Nature Reserve, the meandering River Tame and the M6 motorway, which is on a viaduct as the tunnel passes underneath it. The TBMs are between 20 and 40 metres below ground and the motorway is one of many critical assets, which are vital for Birmingham.

Arlaud said: “It took us years to plan engineering work with National Highways to make sure we were not disturbing, in any way, shape or form, the operation of the M6. And everything went fine. It was heavily monitored, heavily instrumented when we were going under it.”