Recommendation 18

HS2 Ltd recognised that the integration of railway systems would be crucial and explained that it planned to establish a collaborative alliance amongst the main railway systems contractors to encourage them to work together to deliver the integrated systems. Although HS2 Ltd’s pre-contract market engagement found suppliers to be receptive to this approach, it also admitted this was a “bold” and “complex” approach.47 It told us this approach had not been used in the railway sector before, but there were examples from other sectors of bringing together multi-party collaborative contracting, such as the oil and gas industry. We asked HS2 Ltd about the risks arising from this new approach, including how it would manage any potential legal challenges between the companies involved. HS2 Ltd assured us that it was committed to learning the lessons necessary from Crossrail and was working with the team responsible to identify how best to do this. It explained that discrete contracts also presented issues with legal challenge, interface risk between contracts, integration of systems and capability. It told us that taking a collaborative approach meant that it had a much better change of managing these interdependency risks 40 C&AG’s Report, Crossrail – a progress update, Session 2021–22, HC 299, 9 July 2021, para 13 41 Q 36 42 Qq 22–23, 32 43 Q 7 44 Q 37 45 Q 16 46 Qq 34–37 47 Qq 22–23 HS2 Summer 2021 15 and may be able to avoid the “knitting together” of contracts, as was being experienced on Crossrail. It told us that given all the work it had done at this stage, it was confident as it could be about its approach.48 48 Qq 30–32 16 HS2 Summer 2021 2 Delivering the promised benefits and improving community engagement Delivering the benefits promised