Today we announce the publication of our new perspectives report ‘Cancellation of major projects: Perspectives on rethinking the approach to major projects – inspired from HS2 Phase 2 lessons’.
Almost a year ago this month the then prime minister, Rishi Sunak, announced at the Conservative party conference that HS2 Phase 2 would not be going ahead and that the money would be spent on other transport projects instead – the details of which were later published in the Network North Command Paper.
The Major Projects Association was asked for a view on the announcement. But as we are not an industry body, there is rarely a ‘view’ that we could present as representing the whole of our membership – which includes government departments, owner/operators (both publicly and privately owned), industry contractors, advisors, assurers, investors and academia.
Not having a singular view does not mean we should remain silent on the implications for major projects when the UK’s largest infrastructure project has a significant part of it cancelled. Therefore, we sought to understand the range of perspectives held across our different types of member and specifically what lessons could be learned for other projects rather than trying to unpick or critique the merits of the decision itself. We convened a number of senior leaders for a dinner discussion who considered three questions. How did we get here? What’s the immediate impact for the remainder of the HS2 project and related projects? What are the implications for other projects?
The discussion comprised people involved in the early stages of HS2 from initial ideas to the first command paper and the formation of HS2 Ltd. It included a look at some of the inherent and acquired issues that affected the project that made it vulnerable to being cancelled and contrasted the UK’s approach with what is done in other countries. A number of ideas were put forward regarding how we can reduce the likelihood of projects being cancelled (or descoped) or minimising the impact if they are to be cancelled. The issues and ideas do not represent the ‘view’ of members but offer useful perspectives on how we can learn and improve.
Our perspectives report on cancelling projects, drawing on lessons from HS2, highlights six key impacts from cancellation, five factors that increased the risk of cancellation and four ideas for how we avoid them in the future. A lot has changed since we developed the ideas in terms of a change of government, a proposal to merge the National Infrastructure Commission with the Infrastructure & Projects Authority and a number of Bills announced in the King’s Speech addressing HS2 specifically and infrastructure projects generally. The perspectives report includes a postscript to highlight these changes.
Regarding the four ideas, the Major Projects Association will be exploring them further through our programme of studies, events and member network plans. Look out for details on our website and member bulletins.
The report can be found here.
By Andy Murray
Executive Director, Major Projects Association