The message from last year’s High Speed Rail Group Investment Summit is that some significant shifts are needed if major UK infrastructure projects are to go ahead. Sam Sherwood-Hale spoke to Sébastien Vecchiato, Technical Director High Speed at SYSTRA UK & Ireland, to find out more about financing options that could bring schemes to fruition.

On 5 November, the High Speed Rail Group (HSRG) held an Investment Summit in the Cottons Centre, London, to explore how the UK could attract funding to major rail infrastructure projects in the wake of Government decisions to pull back from planned investment.

The HSRG comprises a variety of companies and organisations working across the sector, and sometimes there can be a variety of views. But one thing that was notable at this event was that the UK rail industry is now speaking with a single voice.

‘Talking with various people at the event, I felt that this was maybe one of the first times when the industry is fully aligned’ says Sébastien Vecchiato, Technical Director High Speed at SYSTRA, who sat on one of the day’s expert panels.

‘As a global industry we also acknowledged during the event that we could and should do better. There are a lot of opportunities to drive down UK rail costs, for high-speed rail and for other rail infrastructure too.’

Vecchiato was part of a panel discussion about how costs on future high-speed rail projects could be reduced. Chaired by Belinda Smart, deputy editor at New Civil Engineer, the other panellists were Dyan Perry, chair of the HSRG, Neil Henderson, key account director at Mott MacDonald, and Tom Wilne, EDP programme director at Jacobs.

‘We definitely delivered a consistent message in one voice, whatever our background and experience was’ says Vecchiato. ‘Even questions from the floor emphasised the same view.’ The consensus was that greater involvement of the private sector would help drive down costs globally and for the public purse and that a longer term strategy, with a clear pipeline of rail projects, set out and managed over several decades, could lead to more standardisation and repeatability, unlocking opportunities to grow and retain competency and skills in the UK.

There was also agreement that the industry itself should be doing more to explain the benefits of high-speed rail to the general public. ‘As an industry, we are clearly not managing to convince people enough of the benefits of high-speed rail in the UK’ continues Vecchiato.

‘There is no one better to advocate for rail infrastructure projects than the communities who will benefit from them, but they need to understand and embrace them first.’

Lessons from overseas
With ten years working on private-public partnership (PPP) projects in France, Vecchiato’s role on the panel was to provide insight into how those projects were managed and delivered. He has worked on projects including the high-speed South European Atlantic (SEA) line between Tours and Bordeaux, the Bretagne Pays de la Loire line between Rennes and Le Mans, and the Nîmes-Montpellier Bypass which all cover design, construction, operation and maintenance under the same contracts spanning 25 to 50 years.

‘As I commented on the panel, I would never say that the UK should copy France, because our laws, our regulations and our rail history are different. My role was to provide some lessons learned through what are worldwide considered to be successful deliveries in France, some of which could be tailored to the UK context’ says Vecchiato, who contributed a chapter on this subject to the HSRG’s Driving Investment in Rail report, published in October 2024.

One of the biggest benefits of private sector involvement that Vecchiato has observed in France is the ability to reduce programme overruns. ‘PPP is a very powerful way to deliver projects on time and on budget achieved by setting fixed incentives and restrictions on mid-contract change’ he says.

‘In France, PPPs were schedule-driven projects during design and construction with some strong financial incentives due to their fixed price nature. The faster you deliver, the quicker you get into revenue service and generate some income to balance your investment costs, and eventually the earlier you reach a profitable balance.’

This also helps build support for future projects, he explains: ‘The goal is to deliver the benefits that were agreed in the fastest way possible. The public wants to see trains on the railway, the backers want certainty of delivery in time so they can have a return on their investment. Those are different interests but merge for the same purpose.’

One of the ways to ensure certainty of programme and budget, in particular in the long-term, is to use more standardisation and repeatability, says Vecchiato, an approach that has been successfully deployed for example in both France and Spain. He contrasts this with HS1 and HS2 in the UK, which have been built to totally different specifications.

‘France started in 1981 with its first high speed line from Paris to Lyon. Over the next 35 years there was always a high-speed rail project in progress, which led to a certain level of standardisation and repeatability of activities and solutions’ says Vecchiato.

‘Spain started later but went faster, mnow overtaking France in the length of its high-speed network. Both countries have benefited from standardised design and delivery but most importantly, with this approach, they have secured jobs in the rail industry, as well as upskilling, knowledge and continuity of high-speed rail over several generations. It has now become a common pride in both countries, and changed how people, businesses, authorities and industry consider high-speed rail as a benefit to the whole country.’

Innovation is never a dirty word in such PPP context, but its use must be tightly assessed, says Vecchiato. ‘There were some innovations on French PPPs but 90% of what we did was standardised, proven solutions. Some innovations we accepted, some we rejected because the risk related to their approval by the relevant bodies and authorities with respect to the delivery deadline was not balanced.’

Longer term support
One of the impacts of better communication about the benefits of high-speed rail is that long term plans can transcend changes in Governments and public authorities, both nationally and locally. Vecchiato cites the Tours to Bordeaux PPP which was created by a right-wing national government and pushed forward by the left-wing regional and local councils along the route and in Southwestern France, due to strong support from local communities.

Similarly, in Brittany, local governments of all political hues backed the Bretagne Pays de la Loire scheme and brought part of the financing because their constituents wanted it, he says.

‘We should not start to design and build before we have communicated, discussed and set in stone the benefits to local communities, authorities, and to the nation’ says Vecchiato.

‘This also helps governments to think longer term which allows knowledge, competency and skills to be transferred across generations.’

Despite highlighting the need for the high-speed rail industry to do better, the spirit of the HSRG summit was upbeat and optimistic, says Vecchiato. ‘We know that Government budgets are tight with some priorities to manage, but this provides an opportunity not to change everything, but to unlock opportunities and to find new ways of doing things.’

The High Speed Rail Group is already organising workshops to further investigate some of the opportunities discussed by Vecchiato and how they could be realised.