HS2 CEO Mark Wild has insisted the high-speed rail project is entering a more disciplined phase of delivery, promising the programme’s ongoing “reset” will be the last major overhaul before completion.
In a construction update filmed at Euston, Wild sought to reassure government, industry and the public that HS2 is maintaining momentum despite years of political scrutiny, cost escalation and schedule disruption.
“We’ve got to get this right because this reset will be the last time we do it to the end of the job,” Wild said.
The remarks mark one of the clearest signals yet that HS2 leadership is attempting to shift the narrative surrounding Britain’s largest infrastructure scheme away from controversy and towards operational delivery.
Wild said more than 30,000 people are now working across the programme each day, with safety remaining “everybody’s top priority”.
Alongside the safety message, HS2 used the update to highlight a series of major construction milestones across the route.
All tunnelling between Old Oak Common and Birmingham Curzon Street has now been completed, while 2,000 piles have been installed at Curzon Street station to support the future terminal structure.
At Delta Junction near Coleshill, HS2 has completed the manufacturing of 2,700 viaduct segments, with major visible progress continuing across the site.
Wild also pointed to the scale of ongoing earthworks operations, describing them as one of the programme’s biggest engineering challenges.
“Last year we had a tremendous result,” he said. “More than 24 million cubic metres of earth was moved.”
At Old Oak Common in west London, the station structure is beginning to emerge above ground level, with platform installation already visible. Meanwhile at Euston, preparations continue for the arrival of tunnel boring machines Karen and Madeleine from Old Oak Common.
The update comes as HS2 continues a wider restructuring effort aimed at stabilising costs, schedules and delivery priorities following repeated criticism from politicians and auditors.
Wild said the programme had benefited from the certainty of a four-year government funding settlement and claimed HS2 remained on track to deliver a revised baseline schedule by the end of the year.
“We’re making great progress, helped, of course, by the certainty of a four year settlement in last year’s spending review. We’re very, very clear of our priorities in the next four year, and we’re on track to delivering the baseline schedule at the end of this year, as we’ve always said. It’s taking a couple of years to do this,” he said.
The CEO also emphasised the importance of maintaining productivity during the restructuring process.
“While we do that, it’s absolutely essential that every single day we maximise the productivity we get for the amount of public money that we spend,” Wild said.
Beyond construction progress, HS2 also sought to reinforce its engagement with communities affected by the works. Wild said the organisation had carried out 15,000 community interactions over the past nine months alone.
“I’ve personally spent a lot of time and understood the concerns, how we can help them,” he said.
For the wider rail sector, the update reflects a broader industry shift towards demonstrable delivery, productivity measurement and greater accountability around public investment.
HS2’s leadership increasingly appears focused on rebuilding confidence through visible engineering progress rather than long-term vision alone.
Whether that approach will be enough to fully restore trust in the project remains uncertain, but the message from HS2 is becoming more direct: the railway is still being reset, but construction is moving forward regardless.
