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Terry Hill: "Crossrail 2 is the next and would be good to see"
Distinguished civil engineer Terry Hill has had a good summer, having received the Royal Academy of Engineering biennial President’s medal in July. A former chairman of Arup, Hill has four decades of experience in delivering infrastructure projects. And he thinks the cross-party consensus within Westminster on HS2 is encouraging. He’s also glad that the government prioritised infrastructure projects in the recent comprehensive spending review.
Speaking to PE from Arup’s offices, where appropriately enough Hill has a view of the Crossrail works at Tottenham Court Road, he says: “I think it’s absolutely vital that the government has prioritised infrastructure. It’s brilliant that the government has got the message that infrastructure is important.”
He says the opportunity must be grasped to develop complex projects of the nature of HS2 which span several parliaments.
“Political prevarication can make these projects take even longer than they should do – and that means the benefits of infrastructure are being denied to us all. What’s great is that HS2 seems to have total cross-party support.”
He adds that it is “very satisfying” to see the progress Crossrail is making. Nor is he surprised by claims that most of the economic benefits of the scheme will be felt outside the capital. He also highlights the success of HS1.
“I think people do understand the benefits when they saw that HS1 enabled the Olympics to happen. It was fantastic but it would never have come to London if it hadn’t been for HS1.”
Hill says the last couple of decades have demonstrated that Britain can successfully deliver major projects. “Over the last 10-15 years we have learnt to deliver infrastructure – whether it’s Terminal 5 at Heathrow, or HS1, or the Olympics. But I also believe we quite often pay more for it than we need to. We’ve got to fix that. Yes we can deliver infrastructure, yes our safety record on construction is better than most, but the cost of doing so is quite high.”
He adds that he believes new nuclear power stations should be developed as a matter of priority but the bigger battle in terms of energy involves using it more efficiently. “In terms of our energy capacity, it’s frightening how close to the wind we are sailing. I think energy prices might make us more efficient.”
Looking back over a long civil engineering career, he regards HS1 as the most challenging of the projects he has been involved in.
“HS1 was the most difficult. There were new and unexpected problems at every turn. We run out of funding at one point. But it was delivered on time and on budget and had a reasonable safety record.”
As HS2 is backed by the political elite it is sure to encounter plenty of problems of its own.
“Crossrail 2 is the next and would be good to see,” he says. Whether its passage through Parliament will be as tortured as that of its predecessor remains to be seen.
Another issue regards the bitterly divisive problem of resolving London’s supposed airport capacity problems.
“I don’t know what the answer to that is. There’s no doubt that London needs it. We’re behind other countries in terms of our international aviation business,” he says.
“But we need to increase the speed of our decision-making about infrastructure.”