The Chief Executive of HS2 Ltd says it is too early to understand the full impact that Coronavirus will have on the project.
Mark Thurston was questioned by the Transport Committee, with the aims of looking at what more needs to be done to ensure it is a success.
He was also questioned about the performance on the project to date, to which he said: “There are two things I would say. I have been in this job now just over three years and my focus has been on two fronts.
“One is to get a grip of the costs, particularly of phase 1. The work we have done in the last two years that led up to notice to proceed has a much more confident budget now for phase 1.
“The other thing is to set the organisation up for the next phase. The organisation I inherited was really a development organisation. It had just come through getting Royal Assent for the first phase, so a lot of the work around the legislation.
“Over the last two years, we have transitioned the organisation to one that is set for delivery and we have stood up a significant supply chain on HS2.
“There are some 10,000 people now working right across the organisation, both in HS2 Ltd and in all our contractors and consultants, and I have been doing a lot of work.
“It is a requirement of capability for HS2 and that is what we have done. That was part of the test, effectively, that Government set for us as a precursor to the NTP decision.”
Mark told the committee that they had carried out 10,000 ground investigations and that the target completion date for the project is now 2030. He also said a funding envelope for phase 1 had been agreed of £45 billion – some efficiency savings have been assumed in there.
He said: “There are efficiencies to be delivered. This is a 10-year programme now. We now have a good chunk of the supply chain established, and it is only right and proper that the Government put the company, our contractors and our consultants under some pressure to drive some efficiencies into the programme.
“Having found ourselves where we are, it would not be helpful to then put a whole swathe of optimistic overlays on the estimate and hope that they somehow magic themselves out of the ether over the next 10 years. Yes, we have some efficiencies; we are confident we can deliver on them, but they are much more realistic.”
HS2 remains a controversial project. It is something Mark admitted to the committee was a constant challenge.
He said: “Inevitably, big projects such as HS2 are disruptive and our job with our supply chain is to minimise that disruption as best we can.
“We have made some very bold and clear commitments to be respectful of those communities impacted by our work. We now have over 100 community engagement officers all along the route, working very closely with local communities and local constituency offices. We are listening to what communities need and we have changed.
“Since we have had COVID-19, we have had to lock down. We have had to change the way we engage with communities in this current period. Both the residents’ commissioner and the construction commissioner independently review our performance and talk to constituents up the route. We respond to their reports every month. We have a 24/7 helpdesk in our office in Birmingham.
“We are doing a lot of work in this space. There is always going to be work to do. We are very clear in HS2 that our licence to operate is only as good as the experience of people along the route and we know on some days that it is not as good as it should be. My commitment and our commitment is to get that right.”
Photo credit: HS2 Ltd
