{"id":524610,"date":"2025-07-10T09:20:27","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T08:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/?p=524610"},"modified":"2025-07-10T09:22:48","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T08:22:48","slug":"hs2-government-began-construction-too-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.constructionnews.co.uk\/civils\/hs2\/hs2-government-began-construction-too-fast-10-07-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"HS2: government began construction ‘too fast’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting construction work on HS2 before enough design decisions were taken put all the project risk on the government-owned client, the high-speed rail megaproject\u2019s chief executive has said.<\/p>\n

Mark Wild (pictured) told the House of Commons Transport Committee on Wednesday (9 July) that HS2 \u201cproceeded too fast\u201d with construction work after the notice to proceed was given in April 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The client, HS2 Ltd, \u201creally didn\u2019t have the maturity of design and consenting\u201d, and contractors were \u201cmobilised too quickly\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Wild, rail minister Lord Hendy and the director general for the Department for Transport\u2019s (DfT\u2019s) major rail projects group Alan Over faced questions on the lessons learned from HS2.<\/p>\n

Wild said the project as it stood was two to three years behind schedule, and he predicted an overspend of between 50 and 100 per cent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know there is an inflation effect in there, but these contracts are going to be considerably over budget,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Construction of phase one of HS2 from London to Birmingham was meant to cost \u00a319.5bn, but Wild said that \u00a326bn had already been spent with just over half the work done.<\/p>\n

\u2018Three systemic issues\u2019<\/h3>\n

Wild identified \u201cthree systemic issues\u201d that had caused delays for HS2.<\/p>\n

The first was that work started too quickly. \u201cIt\u2019s like everything in your private lives, building a house extension, building a supermarket \u2013 if you\u2019re designing something in the morning and trying to build it in the afternoon, you end up with a lot of inefficiency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Secondly, he argued that risk was lumped on the government-owned HS2 Ltd, with \u201cvirtually none of it\u201d held by the supply chain. \u201c[That is] simply because they couldn\u2019t price the risk because we started without enough design in the bank,\u201d Wild said.<\/p>\n

He added that was \u201ccompounded by the fact that there is no financial incentive on the contractor to minimise the spend\u201d.<\/p>\n

Wild told the committee that contractors were not being \u201cfrivolous\u201d, but they did not face any \u201ccommercial tensions\u201d from market competition to mitigate costs.<\/p>\n

The third issue, he said, was that HS2 Ltd \u201chad not managed that risk profile\u201d properly.<\/p>\n

Wild also suggested that HS2 did not respond to the inability of the supply chain to price risk once phase one construction got the green light.<\/p>\n

\u201c[That] should have been a red flag, really. If the supply chain can\u2019t price the risk, that would have been an indication that we\u2019re heading to optimism bias.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Hard to understand\u2019<\/h3>\n

Elsewhere in the committee session, the speakers accepted that the rail line was planned to \u201ctoo high a specification\u201d.<\/p>\n

Hendy said they had not found an explanation for why HS2 had to be \u201can exceptionally fast railway, rather than just a fast railway\u201d, or why HS2 had to have a higher specification than HS1, which connects St Pancras International in London with the Channel Tunnel at Folkstone.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is hard to understand why there was such zealotry about the highest speed in a relatively small country, when the origination of [HS2] was to relieve capacity,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Wild argued that the high-speed rail project \u201cis just too fast and too stiff, and that has produced very, very significant civil engineering costs\u201d.<\/p>\n

There was also discussion around the plans for the London terminus at Euston, which has been pushed back and will now open after Old Oak Common station is complete. It is still not clear how Euston Station will be funded.<\/p>\n

Wild said that HS2 Ltd had \u201cfailed to produce one reliable [cost] estimate\u201d for the Euston plan.<\/p>\n

But he said his organisation was now working on a new \u201cshould-cost model\u201d to determine the terminus\u2019 cost, based on historic and demonstrated building performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat will greatly improve the reliability and fidelity of the information HS2 can provide to the department,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know how much it has cost to move a cube of earth, and the gap in HS2 has been the lack of estimating capability and specifically a model to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Treasury officials told MPs that future megaprojects will have separate construction<\/a> and design phase budgets, to avoid proceeding with \u201ctoo-immature designs\u201d.<\/p>\n

And in February, the Public Accounts Committee said HS2\u2019s construction contracts were \u201cextremely poor value for money<\/a>\u201d, calling the scheme \u201ca casebook example of how not to run a major project\u201d.<\/p>\n

HS2 declined to comment.\u00a0Construction News <\/em>approached the DfT for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Starting construction work on HS2 before enough design decisions were taken put all the project risk on the government-owned client, the high-speed rail megaproject\u2019s chief executive has said. Mark Wild (pictured) told the House of Commons Transport Committee on Wednesday (9 July) that HS2 \u201cproceeded too fast\u201d with construction work after the notice to proceed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90643,"featured_media":511733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[549,565,39314],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-524610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-civils","category-government","category-hs2","issue-online-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHS2: government began construction 'too fast' | Construction News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Starting construction work on HS2 before enough design decisions were taken put all the project risk on the government-owned client, the high-speed rail\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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