projects
HS2: Technical Assurance of Delta Junction Civil Assets
10,000+requirements
30,000evidence documents
40 programme assets
The project
High Speed Rail 2 (HS2) is currently the largest and most complex infrastructure project in the UK. Stakeholders include multiple government departments, multiple local and regional authorities, delivery partners, rolling stock and maintenance depot stakeholders, airports, major exhibition centres, environmental campaigners, small businesses and many more. With an estimated cost of approximately £80 billion (~US $102B), HS2 is a new high-speed railway linking up London, the Midlands and the North, serving eight of Britain’s 10 largest cities. HS2 will serve over 25 stations connecting around 30 million people. It will significantly improve connectivity in the North, Midlands and Scotland, creating 500,000 extra jobs and 90,000 homes around HS2 stations.
The challenges
Given the scale of the HS2 project, spanning several geographical sites and multiple, multinational subcontractor teams, Systems Assurance is an incredibly complex undertaking. The project requires creating structured processes to capture, rigorously manage, and track the status of 100,000s of pieces of evidence, ensuring their compliance with safety, technical, and operational requirements. The resulting assurance packs must provide proof to HS2 that the railway system has been designed, constructed, tested, and commissioned to meet regulatory and contractual standards.
What we’re doing
SEMP developed a team specifically for HS2 to deliver the civil infrastructure assurance, including the Verification & Validation Matrix, (which demonstrates evidence/justifications against requirements) and System Safety, for regional areas of HS2. SEMP are delivering progressive assurance, planning assurance across all stages of the life cycle and collecting evidence as the work proceeds through those stages. The team contributes to and delivers processes that enable assurance event planning and mapping, evidence collection and progressive certification for each stage of the works.
Assurance is being delivered against 40 programme assets, which includes: ·
• Processing 30,000+ evidence documents for design, construction, environmental,
• Undertakings and assurances, with the full bidirectional traceability between HS2 project requirements
• Supply chain solutions at concept, design, construction and hand-back phases.
The results so far
To date, SEMP’s work has benefitted the project through efficient development of clear requirements and planning of legal compliance and technical assurance, enhancing productivity and setting clear traceability between client requirements and evidence. SEMP enacted various processes to pave the way for first time acceptance of assurance evidence. These included facilitation of peer reviews from numerous stakeholders to agree content and acceptance of evidence, as well as running workshops orientated to incorporating best practice and lesson learned. By creating tools to manage and report on extracted key metrics SEMP has ensured clients and project leads receive up to date and accurate information on assurance progress.
SEMP achieved high levels of collaboration and professional working relationships with the technical disciplines leading to efficiencies across the diverse delivery team. We’ve developed robust methods and processes to support change management and progressive assurance across all HS2 contract areas.
