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High Speed Two Implementation

Client: Skanska Construction UK Ltd, Costain Ltd, STRABAG AG, Bouygues Travaux Publics, VolkerFitzpatrick, Sir Robert McAlpine, HS2, WSP

Overview

High Speed Two (HS2) received parliamentary approval in February 2017 for the phase one of the route from London to Birmingham, including new stations at London Euston, Old Oak Common, Birmingham Curzon Street and Birmingham Interchange, near Solihull. Since then contracts have been let, enabling work has started at various locations along the route and station design is underway. CJ Associates are involved with several of
the packages including:

  • S1: Euston Tunnels and Approaches – SCS JV (Skanska Construction UK Ltd, Costain Ltd, STRABAG AG)
  • S2: Northolt Tunnels – SCS JV (Skanska Construction UK Ltd, Costain Ltd, STRABAG AG)
  • C1: Chiltern Tunnels and Colne Valley Viaduct – Align JV (Bouygues Travaux Publics, VolkerFitzpatrick, Sir Robert McAlpine)
  • C2: North Portal Chiltern Tunnels to Brackley – HS2
  • Old Oak Common Station Design
  • Curzon Street Station Design

Key Services

Euston Tunnels and Approaches and Northolt Tunnels – Interface and Consents Management

Our role for SCS JV on the S1 and S2 packages, includes managing and coordinating the JV’s interfaces and relationships with all external parties. Our approach involves working proactively and collaboratively with external stakeholders to mitigate project impacts and promote a positive legacy. We carry out the following functions:

  • Community Engagement: building strong working relationships with the wider community along the line of the route, including individuals, organisations, residents, schools, charities, businesses, religious groups and owners of recreational spaces. Ensuring there is an understanding of the project impacts and mitigations while conveying and translating the community’s needs to the project teams. Identifying project opportunities by promoting local investment to provide a legacy for generations to come.
  • Consents: obtaining Town Planning, Traffic & Highways, and Environmental consents and coordinating land access & possessions. The team manage the process to ensure that the correct information is produced to enable third party consent granting bodies to approve design and construction methodologies before the relevant works begin on site. During construction, the Consents Team ensure that the works are carried out in accordance with the consented plans and seek further consents should there be a need for design change or alterations to approved construction methodologies.
  • Technical Interface: ensuring design and construction interfaces with other HS2 contracts are identified, recorded, coordinated and resolved so that works can progress in line with the construction programme.
  • Stakeholder Management (SM) and Undertaking & Assurances (U&A) Team: During the parliamentary process to obtain powers to construct the railway, HS2 Ltd entered into over 3,000 agreements with affected parties, ranging from simple agreements with an individual, to highly complex, multi-faceted agreements with large organisations such as Local Authorities and those with property interests. The team assures and demonstrates compliance with each of these commitments by liaising with the project team to confirm they are familiar with agreements that affect their work; producing Commitment Compliance Plans that outline the details of how to comply with each commitment and documenting and collating the evidence; engaging with stakeholders who have received Commitments and acting as the single point of contact between them and the project. In addition, they carry out risk reduction and damage limitation in the rare event that a breach of a commitment does occur.

Old Oak Common and Curzon Street Stations

Planning Consents and U&A Manager on the station design contracts, including:

  • Identification and programming of consents (including planning, highway and S61 consents)
  • Preparation and updating of the Consents Management Plan
  • Liaison with OPDC, TfL, GLA, BCC, TfWM and other consent granting bodies and statutory agencies
  • Compliance with U&As and third-party agreements
  • Manage interfaces with, and inputs to, the Schedule 17 submissions from the design team

Chiltern Tunnels and Colne Valley Viaduct

CJ Associates are assisting ALIGN with the identification, preparation, submission and management of consents associated with the design and construction of the Colne Valley Viaduct and the 5 headhouses for the Chiltern Tunnel shafts, including town planning, water, noise, waste and highways/traffic consents. The work has included delivering consents for the enabling works to improve the design information. Supporting community engagement events and developing collaborative working relationships with key stakeholders to deliver consents under a different regime to that which consent granting bodies may be used to.

North Portal Chiltern Tunnel to Brackley

Consents Manager for HS2 representing them in liaison with the four relevant Local Planning Authorities (Chiltern, Aylesbury Vale, Wycombe, Cherwell). The role involves collaborating with engineering, construction, land and property, landscape, architecture and other professionals to monitor the planning powers the HS2 Act provides and ensure they are exercised responsibly; educating the contractors’ Consent Managers about the powers that are available, the importance of the relationships with decision makers, the importance of managing the design process to ensure consents are right first time; facilitating the “proportionate forward discussions” the Planning Memorandum requires HS2 to have with LPAs about prospective requests for approval, and reminding LPAs of the limits to their powers; ensuring the contractors are delivering Schedule 17 consents on time in accordance with the Act and EMRs; and assisting the contractors to improve the design of the railway by making local and professional connections, whilst being mindful of cost and programme.

HS2 – Technical Author

Following the successful passage of the Phase 1 Bill through Parliament we were retained by HS2 Ltd to prepare documents capturing key aspects of the hybrid Bill and its influence on the design ahead of the mobilisation of civil engineering contracts and the commencement of the procurement processes for Stations, Rolling Stock and Rail Systems. The documents needed to clearly show the working arrangements between different phases of the programme and bring together the diverse pieces of information into an accessible ‘story’ including understanding options and scenarios that were not progressed and why and identifying lessons from Phase 1 that should be considered in the development of Phase 2a and Phase 2b.

Value Added

Our extensive knowledge of the HS2 project gained from our work in the Authorisation phase, along with our
detailed understanding of the construction industry, the statutory processes and the HS2 Act has enabled us
to provide the experienced professionals required to fulfil numerous roles on the early implementation phase
of the project where they have been able to share understanding and provide direction to support the
efficient commencement of designs, plans and works.