The HS2 delivery organisation has joined BuildOffsite to seek early advice on designing and procuring factory-built bridges, viaducts and embankments.
The organisation’s members include manufacturers, software companies, government departments, retail clients and contractors, including Laing O’Rourke, Skanska and Interserve.
HS2 is under pressure to rein in costs after it was revealed in the Comprehensive Spending Review that the Department of Transport’s allocated budget for the first phase from London to the west midlands now stands at £21.4bn including contingency.
However, HS2 has said that it aims to deliver Phase 1 for £17.16bn.
BuildOffsite’s chief executive, Richard Ogden, said: “We will be advising HS2 on their Design for Manufacture and offsite strategy.
“HS2 is like a grown-up train set – all you need is simple, repetitive components. But civil engineers have a tendency to want all the bridges to be different.
“So HS2 is breaking step and saying ‘we can’t afford unique, prototype hand-built bridges, we need bridges that do the job and we only five different types’.”
HS2 Ltd commercial director, Beth West, added: "We have joined BuildOffSite to tap into in the best-practice expertise for quicker, cheaper and higher quality construction methods, which are made possible through the offsite manufacture of assets such as bridges and viaducts.
“HS2 will bring enormous benefits for the country in terms of freeing up space on our increasingly crowded railway, improving transport connections between our biggest cities and acting as an engine for economic growth. But it is vital that we deliver a high quality, safe network both on time and on budget.
“We believe that off-site manufacture has the potential to deliver a number of our key objectives: increasing reliability through manufacture of a consistent product in a controlled environment, reducing the amount of time that we are on site and thereby reducing the impact on our neighbours, increasing the safety of those constructing HS2, and reducing the cost of production and installation.”
The HS2 project took a setback earlier in the summer when Labour’s Lord Mandelson revoked his earlier support for the line, although his party is still backing the scheme.
Responding to Mandelson’s criticisms, HS2 chairman Doug Oakervee argued that lack of capacity and the crumbling state of the West Coast mainline were the main reasons the UK needed to build HS2.
In a letter to the press, Oakervee said: “Over the next few months we will be publishing further detailed work that will include fresh analysis of the wider economic benefits to the regions of the UK, a fully revised Economic Case that will address the latest research on the value of travel time and will include sensitivity analysis on the demand for HS2. I am committed to making sure that all of that work is complete by mid October 2013 so that MPs and others have adequate time to consider the benefits prior to the introduction of the Hybrid Bill.”
