Vivek Sharma, executive director and founding member at Xpedeon, discusses early warning signs of control loss in the HS2 reset and how to prevent this from escalating
The National Audit Office’s latest review of the HS2 reset found that the Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd are taking a considered approach, while noting that significant work remains before the reset can be completed.
The report suggested that the programme should not move into implementation until there is confidence that the necessary cost and schedule baseline, commercial arrangements, plans and organisational capabilities are in place.
For a programme of this scale and complexity, that underlines the importance of a clear delivery plan, alongside the operational visibility needed to identify when delivery begins to diverge and respond accordingly.
A new baseline is only the starting point
This challenge is not unique; across large, complex infrastructure programmes, agreeing a baseline for cost, scope, and schedule is the first step, giving a project a clear position against which progress can be measured. Once delivery starts, those expectations need to be continuously monitored against current activity across every major work package.
Confidence in measuring progress – and intervening where needed – comes from having a reliable and current view of a project’s costs-to-date, where delivery is up to, and subcontractor payments, so senior leaders can see where the programme could start to move away from the baseline and spot emerging commercial and delivery risks. Once work progresses, site records like variations and approvals must be updated and visible to commercial, financial, and procurement teams so they can see where cost, scope or schedules are changing as it happens. It requires real-time visibility for project leaders, which means more than monthly reporting.
Take a design change to the drainage system serving a large commercial development. The instruction may be issued promptly on site so excavation and installation can continue, but commercial also needs access to the revised design to understand exactly what has changed from the original scope, the instruction authorising the change, the cost breakdown and the approval status.
Together, these records show whether the change increases costs, affects upcoming work, or pushes that package off schedule, enabling leaders to understand its wider impact and act before it creates delays or cost overruns elsewhere in the project.
Where early warning signs could appear within major projects
Early warning signs on major programmes often sit inside the day-to-day, routine project activity. For example, a subcontractor carrying out concrete works may apply for payment, but the site records confirming how much work was completed and approved sit in separate systems and aren’t available to the commercial team in a usable format. Commercial teams then have to locate and reconcile the records before confirming whether the amount claimed is accurate, while finance cannot process payment confidently until those checks are complete.
The problem arises when approval, site evidence, subcontractor application, and financial records don’t move together in a seamless process. If they are spread across a plethora of email approvals, spreadsheets and separate systems, teams spend time rebuilding the same history before they can act. The payment may eventually be processed, but the delay can disrupt cash flow and create unnecessary friction with suppliers.
The recently published Construction Systems Census 2026, based on a survey of 500 senior professionals at UK construction companies turning over more than £50m, suggests that these control gaps are common across the sector. Only 30% of respondents said they had full confidence in true cost-to-date during a live project. A further 55% required manual checks before they could rely on the financial position, and only 13% said completed work was reflected as coded cost information in finance systems on the same day.
The risk of these gaps grows when the same type of issues occur across multiple subcontractors and work packages. On large, long-term projects with complex contracts and multiple supply chain tiers, those individual gaps can add up to wider problems with cost, payment and delivery. Costs can take longer to appear in the overall project position, committed spend might be harder to track, and decision makers could end up working from an incomplete view of progress, making it more difficult to spot where costs are increasing, where additional work is not being properly valued or recovered, or where delivery is falling behind. It can also mean that project leaders lack the evidence needed to make confident decisions or explain them under scrutiny.
What connected control looks like
Better operational control starts by keeping site activity connected to the records likely to be needed later. This level of control requires a system that links commercial, finance, procurement, supply chain and site workflows, so recorded activity on site can flow through to valuation, payment and reporting without teams rebuilding the trail.
Using the drainage system variation example: if the site instruction to change the drainage system design results in additional work, the instruction should remain attached to the evidence, approval, and valuation in a format and system both site and commercial teams can access. This will enable them to assess the cost and recoverability, while finance can see how it affects the project overall cost position.
The same principle applies to material deliveries. When a delivery arrives, say, of concrete for a structural pour, the purchase order, Goods Received Note, invoice and budget for that work package should be visible together in one system. Procurement and finance can then confirm what was ordered, what arrived and whether the invoice is ready to process without searching across disparate emails and spreadsheet data.
For programmes at scale, an effective construction-specific ERP platform connects commercial, finance, procurement, supply chain, and site workflows. The system should keep approved records, evidence, and decisions easy to access, visible, and connected through billing, payment, and reporting. The real value lies in maintaining a traceable record as work moves across organisations and contract packages, rather than rebuilding it after a problem appears.
The importance of data discipline
Of course, cultivating data discipline is critical to getting the most from your ERP. Data discipline means recording project changes, costs, and approvals consistently as work happens, with clear responsibility for who updates each record and when to escalate an exception.
When records are updated consistently, and a system connects all necessary workflows, it can help large construction organisations strengthen audit trails and keep changes, approvals, and costs aligned as work progresses. This offers senior leaders a clearer view of where costs are changing, whether additional work has been properly valued and whether the project is still tracking against its agreed position.
From baseline to delivery
For large infrastructure projects, a plan against which delivery can be measured matters, but the real test comes once work starts moving. If changes in cost, scope or progress are identified too late, further spending may already have been committed and delivery decisions made on an incomplete position.
Across programmes of scale, repeated gaps like that can turn routine project issues into wider cost and schedule problems, undermining the baseline meant to keep delivery on track.
The post Large infrastructure projects succeed if delivery records keep pace appeared first on Planning, Building & Construction Today.
