The Challenge
HS2 is responsible for delivering a new multibillion-pound high-speed rail link in the United Kingdom connecting London, the Midlands, the North and Scotland. The railway will serve over 25 stations, including eight of Britain’s 10 largest cities and connect around 30 million people.
HS2 recognised that taking a whole-life approach to managing its digital assets was key to delivering value for money. HS2 was seeking to address a misalignment between the technical and project management activities by instilling a more effective teamworking approach.
Our Role
Following a rigorous tender process, we were appointed to develop HS2’s digital transformation strategy.
We introduced our High Performance Team model which unlocked underlying issues, realigned the teams, and helped improve collaborative approaches and relationships.
Having helped HS2 develop their digital strategy, we were then appointed to deliver their Integration and Visualisation Hub, which enables HS2 to develop an integrated information model or ‘Digital Twin’ of the railway. We developed and deployed our DataConnect platform to connect, assure and visualise data through a user-friendly, browser based portlet framework.
Client Benefits
Improved collaboration and relationships enabled the teams to progress the digital strategy with confidence. We helped HS2 build robust, innovative, and extensible capabilities that can handle the complexity and scale of their large estate and asset portfolio, supporting key business decisions by informing optimal usage and maintenance strategies, improving productivity and reducing the risk profile of the enterprise.
From the initial deployment of the Vis Hub, the value of the platform was recognized by the HS2 Executive Team and HS2 CEO Mark Thurston. It forms a foundation for the development of HS2’s Digital Twin. Over 300 of the HS2 team are now users of the Vis Hub and engagement is continuing to increase with time, as more use cases are identified and delivered.
