Will HS2 Fail or Succeed?

Dave Perton:

 I believe it will generate prosperity and without that the wild life trusts will fail anyway. 

 

There's an interesting discussion there that my wife and I have been having for about the last 30 years - given that she's spent most of those years employed by or freelancing for Wildlife Trusts (and indeed The Wildlife Trusts) amongst other similar organisations! I've always had concerns that the Trusts can very much focus on conservation rather than sustainability of the whole ecosystem (hence if they fail it wouldn't actually have much wider impact), but as my wife has (reasonably) patiently explained to me it's not really that simple of course...and again as many conferences could be  (and indeed are) held about that as are about HS2 - involving people who, unlike me, actually understand this!


Going back to basics, when I'm looking at any potential rail project my key questions are: has the scope of the complete project, including all potential interfaces (including the non-engineering ones) been defined? And then have the people who thoroughly understand those interfaces been allowed to provide input to the potential risks? Where rail projects far too often get it wrong is by basing the decisions on people (engineering, financial, whatever) who don't know what they don't know, so make perfectly rational, logical decisions which are based on complete misunderstandings of the problem. Yes, it's expensive, time consuming, tedious, and sadly tends to end up with giving lots of work to over paid consultants (sorry!!! ?) but it's vital if we're going to get the results we demand from infrastructure projects. So the one thing I will say on HS2 is that if it is going ahead for purely political reasons and that therefore concerns are not being sought, listened to and risk assessed - which at the moment I have a nasty feeling may be happening to a greater or lesser extent - then that would definitely not be good rail engineering practice. But whether that risk assessment result in any particular action is for the project to defend.


Actually it is a philosophical issue - it can be a hard fact for many engineers to face, but there is no "right" answer to any engineering challenge, just options that we may decide are more or less preferable at the time. And the most most important thing (which is what it feels like I spend most of my day telling clients!) is that we get the best information we reasonably can on those options, decide what we're going to do and why (basically, risk assess them), and then record that decision. We may have got it "wrong", as in we may get a consequence that the customer or wider society didn't want, but at least we can show we're being open about why we did what we did, and that we did the best we could.


Cheers,


Andy

Dave Perton:

 I believe it will generate prosperity and without that the wild life trusts will fail anyway. 

 

There's an interesting discussion there that my wife and I have been having for about the last 30 years - given that she's spent most of those years employed by or freelancing for Wildlife Trusts (and indeed The Wildlife Trusts) amongst other similar organisations! I've always had concerns that the Trusts can very much focus on conservation rather than sustainability of the whole ecosystem (hence if they fail it wouldn't actually have much wider impact), but as my wife has (reasonably) patiently explained to me it's not really that simple of course...and again as many conferences could be  (and indeed are) held about that as are about HS2 - involving people who, unlike me, actually understand this!


Going back to basics, when I'm looking at any potential rail project my key questions are: has the scope of the complete project, including all potential interfaces (including the non-engineering ones) been defined? And then have the people who thoroughly understand those interfaces been allowed to provide input to the potential risks? Where rail projects far too often get it wrong is by basing the decisions on people (engineering, financial, whatever) who don't know what they don't know, so make perfectly rational, logical decisions which are based on complete misunderstandings of the problem. Yes, it's expensive, time consuming, tedious, and sadly tends to end up with giving lots of work to over paid consultants (sorry!!! ?) but it's vital if we're going to get the results we demand from infrastructure projects. So the one thing I will say on HS2 is that if it is going ahead for purely political reasons and that therefore concerns are not being sought, listened to and risk assessed - which at the moment I have a nasty feeling may be happening to a greater or lesser extent - then that would definitely not be good rail engineering practice. But whether that risk assessment result in any particular action is for the project to defend.


Actually it is a philosophical issue - it can be a hard fact for many engineers to face, but there is no "right" answer to any engineering challenge, just options that we may decide are more or less preferable at the time. And the most most important thing (which is what it feels like I spend most of my day telling clients!) is that we get the best information we reasonably can on those options, decide what we're going to do and why (basically, risk assess them), and then record that decision. We may have got it "wrong", as in we may get a consequence that the customer or wider society didn't want, but at least we can show we're being open about why we did what we did, and that we did the best we could.


Cheers,


Andy