HS2 Signs 104 km Civils Contracts With EKFB And Align UK

LONDON – HS2 Ltd has signed new commercial agreements with two civil engineering joint ventures, EKFB and Align, covering a combined 104 km of the high-speed line between London and the West Midlands. The renegotiation follows the exhaustion, by 2024, of the £15 billion (€17.4 billion) civils budget set in 2020 while construction remained far from complete. Talks with the two remaining civils contractors, Balfour Beatty VINCI and Skanska Costain STRABAG, are still open, with the wider reset programme running to spring 2027.

What Does This Contract Cover?

The two renegotiated agreements cover 104 km of HS2 Phase One civil engineering works, split into an 80 km section and a 24 km section delivered by separate joint ventures. EKFB — comprising Eiffage, Kier, Ferrovial Construction and BAM Nuttall — holds the 80 km Buckinghamshire-to-Warwickshire package running from the northern portal of the Chiltern Tunnel to Long Itchington Wood. Align — Bouygues Travaux Publics, Sir Robert McAlpine and VolkerFitzpatrick — holds the 24 km west London and south Buckinghamshire package, including the Colne Valley Viaduct and the Chiltern Tunnel, the longest structures of their type on the network. The revised payment model replaces the pre-2020 structure that placed almost all financial risk on UK taxpayers with milestone-linked and cost-control incentives.

Key Contract Data

How Does This Compare to Similar Contracts?

Incentive-linked renegotiation on multi-billion-pound civils packages is uncommon at this scale, and the closest recent comparators sit in different procurement categories. Alstom’s November 2025 contract to supply 55 electric locomotives to Ukrainian Railways is structured around multilateral financing from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the World Bank rather than contractor risk-sharing (Source: Alstom, 2025). Ontario’s $1.3 billion operating and maintenance award for GO Transit and UP Express, under which Alstom delivered over 117,000 GO rail trips and more than 56,000 UP Express trips in 2024–2025, ties payment to service delivery rather than construction milestones (Source: Government of Ontario, 2025). Neither carries the cost-overrun exposure embedded in HS2’s original 2020 civils contracts, where £15 billion was consumed before the works were near completion and the Phase One cost estimate has since passed £100 billion (Source: Department for Transport, 2024). The renegotiation also lands in a market where UK rail is projected to reach USD 185.31 billion by 2034 at a 6.65% CAGR from 2026 to 2034 (Source: Market Data Forecast, 2026), and where FS Group and Certares have signalled a roughly €1 billion private investment programme targeting UK and European high-speed rail (Source: Railway News, 2025). The revised contract value, the specific incentive thresholds and any liability caps were not disclosed by HS2 Ltd.

Editor’s Analysis

HS2’s shift to milestone-linked payment transfers a defined slice of cost-overrun risk back to contractors who previously carried almost none, and it does so at the point of peak construction — 30,000 workers and 46 miles (74 km) of twin-bore tunnelling already excavated — rather than at a re-tender that would cost years. That timing is the real signal: the client has chosen commercial renegotiation over re-procurement, a template other European megaprojects with exhausted early-stage budgets may follow. The private-capital interest from FS Group and Certares suggests investors see high-speed rail demand in Europe as intact even as public delivery models are reset, with global high-speed rail investment up 24% in 2025 and Europe accounting for 22% of that activity (Source: Market Context Data, 2025).

FAQ

Q: What is the value of the new HS2 contracts with EKFB and Align?
A: HS2 Ltd has not disclosed the renegotiated contract values. The original 2020 civils budget for Phase One was £15 billion (€17.4 billion) and was exhausted by 2024, while the wider government funding ambition announced in May stands at £93.2 billion (€108.1 billion).

Q: When will HS2 be finished and when will the new delivery timetable be published?
A: HS2 Ltd says the reset programme will continue until spring 2027, when a new baseline programme and official delivery timetable will be finalised. No confirmed opening date for passenger services has been issued alongside the new contracts.

Q: Will these contract changes affect passengers or fares?
A: The stated objective is to complete the railway at the lowest reasonable cost, which could reduce pressure on the public funding envelope rather than change fares directly. Any passenger-facing impact, including service patterns between Old Oak Common, Birmingham and Euston, has not been officially confirmed.