It’s the biggest project on the government’s infrastructure shopping list, but KPMG's Sue Kershaw reckons HS2 will rely on people management as much as pile-drivers.


High Speed Two (HS2), the superfast railway connecting London, the Midlands and the North, is perhaps the most complex and confusingly named infrastructure project in British history.

Complex? At £56bn, it’s comfortably the biggest individual project in the National Infrastructure Plan. It involves co-ordinating thousands of suppliers, from engineers to accountants, over a ten-year build. (That’s just phase one; phase two runs through to 2032.) And it is controversial – with vocal interest from politicians and the public fiercely for or against construction.

HS2 isn’t just about cutting journey times. It’s about rail capacity for the next 50 years and regenerating parts of the country left behind both socially and economically. As HS2 chief executive Simon Kirby has said, it’s a fundamental change in the way we view transport across the UK.

The bigger purpose

What really motivates people working on long-term projects such as these is delivering a public good. What kept me and many others enthused while working on the £1bn Olympic Transport plans for London 2012 was that immovable deadline: July 27th at 7.30pm. The reputation of a nation was at stake. 

So Kirby is right to focus on HS2’s wider purpose. If you’re an accountant on the team, you’re not just counting beans – you’re helping change lives, you’re shaping national destiny. You can tell your grandchildren, ‘I helped build that station’.

These motivational messages might ring hollow in some commercial organisations. And they will land badly, even in a purpose-driven enterprise like HS2, if there’s a lack of genuine collaboration around the many different entities working on the project. Contractor bickering or lack of co-ordination will undermine that messaging. Collaborative agreements in contracts are one thing; driving the message home throughout supplier organisations is another.

What does the client need?

A great first step is to focus on the client – in this case, the UK government – and work around its priorities. What’s keeping them up at night? What does success look like to them? In the negotiations about who does what, when, for how much and with what interdependencies, those end-goals for the client are paramount. Aggressive language at any stage of the negotiations is simply corrosive.

And it won’t win the respect of the people working to deliver the project. Project managers are part of a big family. They’re not usually corporate drones angling for promotions. They’re there for the project, and to develop new skills through unique experiences (HS2 will deliver plenty of those).

A good project manager has a toolkit of methodologies, practices and competencies. We have some of the best in the world in the UK. But to make the best use of these tools, they need help in seeing how to add value, make critical decisions – and reduce costs. On HS2 in particular, cost management has already become a very public priority for the end client.

Proven on projects

That’s why dedicated advisory roles for major projects are a great idea – ensuring that they deliver planned economic and social benefits on time, on budget and to the highest standards. It’s about working on a day-to-day basis with the project professionals offering funding and financial advice, commercial nous, dealing with environmental concerns and supporting engineering and technical innovation.

Major project advisory roles can ensure true collaboration between the many contractors, build up a huge amount of trust and rapport with them and demonstrate real agility in responding to events.

For anyone who cares about infrastructure excellence, projects such as HS2 represents a once-in-a-lifetime combination of the opportunity to deploy expertise, a project at massive scale and a genuine mission to create a legacy for our economy and society. 


To discuss this piece in more detail, feel free to contact the author at sue.kershaw@KPMG.co.uk​ 

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