High Speed 2 is a new railway system between London and Scotland that will serve over 25 stations, including eight of Britain’s 10 largest cities, and connect about 30 million people. HS2 will be built in three phases, with the joint venture of Mott MacDonald and Systra (MSD JV) with Balfour Beatty Vinci awarded the design-build contract for phase 1 northern sector civil works between London and the West Midlands. Since it is the biggest phase of HS2, they had to manage over 1,000 people working from 30 locations across over 18 disciplines, as well as terabytes of data. The project had transformed in size since its onset, requiring more standardized processes and new technology for effective data management, change control, project reporting, process standardization, and transparent communication.

Since the project team already used ProjectWise during the concept phase, they integrated more Bentley applications for the next stage of development, as their open nature enables interoperability with various systems and helps improve data accessibility. By designing on the Bentley iTwin platform, they accelerated model access by 95% and used high-quality data to improve understanding. Rapid loading speed is expected to save GBP 200,000 annually and reduces data extraction time from two weeks to within hours. They streamlined new deliverable creation with automatic metadata retrieval, reducing manual entry by 75%. Integrating advanced work packaging drastically reduced reporting times and streamlined information sharing, accelerating the project schedule. Additionally, they integrated the carbon emission impacts into the model, helping them choose options that will help HS2 reduce its carbon footprint by 50%.