Mike Lyons: all aboard for HS2

Mike-Lyons

Mike Lyons is a busy man. The HS2 Ltd programme director tasked with delivering the first phase, from London to Birmingham, of the £55.7bn high-speed rail project is planning an “aggressive” recruitment campaign to increase the Birmingham team by more than 700 people.

London-based HS2 Ltd staff began relocating to M&G Real Estate’s 300,000 sq ft Two Snowhill building last summer, where HS2 Ltd now houses its UK construction headquarters. Although the terms of the deal have never officially been released, HS2 is reportedly paying a rent of between £28 and £30 per sq ft on a 10- to 15-year lease.

Lyons, a Mancunian and former Network Rail director, has relocated from London with the company. He says: “I am enjoying being here. The Midlands has a lot to offer and Birmingham is really starting to like itself. It has got some great facilities and it has transformed itself.”

In terms of the organisation’s offices in the city, he says: “Two Snowhill is a fantastic office in a great location. We had a blank canvas and got to decide how we wanted the space to look from scratch.”

HS2 Ltd has four floors in the building, totalling 100,000 sq ft. Lyons says: “We are looking to employ a total of about 1,000 staff in Birmingham when we are up to full capacity. We currently have about 300 staff here.”

He puts the dampener on suggestions that HS2 might take more space in the proposed, neighbouring 400,000 sq ft Three Snowhill building. Instead he suggests that building will become an engineering cluster for supply chain firms for HS2. “There are already a number of such firms in talks to take space in the city,” he says.

The offices at Two Snowhill were not officially launched until earlier this month, at the same time as a Commons select committee began hearing final petitions about phase one of the scheme and planning consent was granted on the £22m, 61,350 sq ft National College for High Speed Rail in Birmingham, which will train much of the workforce required to build HS2 and other future infrastructure projects.

These milestones, however, are nothing without the Hybrid Bill for Phase One becoming law by gaining crucial royal assent, which Lyons says is the main priority for 2016. “Without it we don’t have a scheme,” he says. Approval is expected by the end of this year, but until then no compulsory purchase orders can be authorised.

That does not mean Lyons, who is responsible for construction of the West Midlands section of HS2 from Leamington Spa to Birmingham and then on to Staffordshire and Lichfield, where it will join the West Coast mainline, is twiddling his thumbs. He has several property projects to plan, including two stations – Interchange station in Solihull and Birmingham’s city centre Curzon Street terminus – as well as a maintenance depot at Washwood Heath. “We are not holding our breath until December. We are looking at continuing with development and procurement apace and we have the funding and support to do that.”

Curzon Street station may be HS2’s jewel in the crown in the West Midlands, but there have been tensions between the government-run company and the city council on building design, with one council source slamming HS2’s original design proposal for the building as a “tin shed” lookalike and saying the vision lacked a “wow factor”.

Lyons, who sits on the shadow board of the Curzon Regeneration Partnership, which includes the council and local stakeholders and is chaired by former BPF chief executive Liz Peace, has a more positive perspective. “We want the wow factor too, but it has to fit into the local perspective as well as the national one. Basically we want the same things.”

Also in Eastside, the shadow regeneration board will rejuvenate the derelict 178-year-old Curzon Street station Grade I listed building, which will sit next to the terminus and may be incorporated into the new designs. Additionally, HS2 is in talks with Hammerson and the council about the recent extension of the city centre enterprise zone to include the Martineau Galleries site and what that means for the project, though no details are yet available.

In Solihull, the timescale for the Interchange station (a through station which sits within the UK Central regeneration area) – where the junction of the north-south HS2 route and the spur linking to Curzon Street meet – mirrors that for the terminus project. UK Central includes 568 acres of central England sites ripe for development to 2040.

Lyons adds: “I am on the UK Central shadow board too, which looks at masterplanning aspirations for Solihull Council, so that our Interchange project and the surrounding infrastructure works are all integrated into the regeneration of UK Central.” Lyons is tight-lipped on budgets for both Interchange and Curzon Street, saying only that they are being reworked and may be announced in late summer.