Learning Legacy Podcast: Episode One – Building a Learning Legacy
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Episode overview
The concept of the Learning Legacy programme has been around for longer than you might think. Starting at London 2012, collating and sharing knowledge, innovation, good practice and lessons learned from major projects has developed in a number of ways to get to where we currently reside.
In this first episode we’ll take a look back at other major projects and their approach to knowledge sharing., and we’ll explore how HS2 has gone about creating the most comprehensive Learning Legacy programme of any major UK project to date.
Featuring:
- Bridget Badoe McQuick – HS2, Learning Legacy Manager
- Karen Elson – Co Cre8, Learning Legacy Manager
- Simon Bennett – Crossrail International, Associate Director for stakeholder engagement and Learning Legacy
- Andy Murray – Major Project Association, Executive Director
- Clive Roberts – University of Birmingham, Professor of Railway Systems
- Martin Sherlock – National Highways Knowledge Management Lead
Bridget gives an overview of HS2’s Learning Legacy programme and its open challenges.
Karen takes us back to London 2012 with the start of Learning Legacy and the journey of the programmes over the years that brought us to where we are now.
Simon and Andy describe the setup of Crossrail’s Learning Legacy and the MPA’s Knowledge Hub. Their collective experience and support made each programme better than the previous and to have it all in one place within the Knowledge Hub.
Clive and Martin give their thoughts on the importance of HS2’s Learning Legacy Programme for the wider industry.
Find out more about HS2’s Learning Legacy Programme
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Episode transcript
This is a transcript of episode one of HS2’s Learning Legacy podcast, first published on 28 March 2023.
HS2 is Britain’s new high-speed railway. Once it’s complete, HS2’s British-built bullet trains will provide zero-carbon journeys between London and the West Midlands. It is the largest construction project in Britain, with around 30,000 jobs supported by the project and over 3,200 UK-based businesses helping to build it.
Not only will HS2 provide better journeys and boost economic growth, the construction of the project will leave a legacy of knowledge and innovation for the wider industry to learn from.
Hello and welcome to the HS2 Learning Legacy podcast. I’m your host Rhian Owen. Over the next five episodes we are going to explore how HS2 is sharing knowledge to shape the future through its Learning Legacy programme. It is a major knowledge-sharing initiative, designed to spread the innovations, best practice and lessons learned from HS2. We’re talking to the people behind some of HS2’s most popular Learning Legacy resources – taking a deeper dive into what the industry can learn from them.
In this first episode we’re going to look back at earlier major projects and their approach to knowledge sharing. We’ll hear how major projects can indirectly provide a boost to productivity across the construction sector by learning from each other, and we’ll explore how HS2 has gone about creating the most comprehensive Learning Legacy programme of any major UK project.
But first, what is a Learning Legacy?
Bridget Badoe McQuick 01:48
The Learning Legacy is a programme which has been designed to gather and share the knowledge, innovation and good practice and lessons learned from across the HS2 family so it’s helping raise the bar in the wider industry.
This is Bridget Badoe McQuick. She’s the Learning Legacy manager for HS2.
Bridget Badoe McQuick 02:06
We have a lot of experts that work on HS2. So it’s really about how we share what we’ve done, the innovative approaches that we’ve taken, that we’ve learned things that have gone well, things that may not have gone as well, things that people have learned.
Clive Roberts 02:24
Obviously, the main focus of any big major project is to deliver that project. But the legacy is important as well, because that is what shifts the industry on. It’s what we learn from. If big projects like HS2 can’t create a shift in ideas then what is?
This is Clive Roberts, he is professor of railway systems at the University of Birmingham, and director of the UK Rail Research and Innovation Network. (UKRRIN)
Clive Roberts 02:50
Major projects form a real foundation for our future learning and pushing forward innovation in railways, lots came out of Crossrail, huge amounts of coming out of HS2 around tunnelling, around how we build robust systems and make sure that they’ll operate properly. How we do lots of monitoring, lots and lots of innovation in here that’s going to obviously feed into HS2 but feed into railways around the world.
Martin Sherlock 03:17
The biggest opportunity, I think that HS2 has, is simply the scale of it. It is so big.
This is Martin Sherlock, he is the knowledge management lead at National Highways and was attending the HS2 Learning Legacy Live event in London – which is one of the ways that HS2 actively shares knowledge with the industry.
Martin Sherlock 03:36
I love today’s event, because it was full of ideas and people. And everything we do is the people that bring it, it’s the stuff in people’s heads that makes that difference. So that ability to dream and experiment […] Can you think about how we start to build this across the wider sector. So we’re very siloed those silos cut two ways. So there’s a kind of public sector silos, national highways, network rail, HS2 etc. And we do talk to each other, but we still largely sit within those silos. And then if you look at our supply chain, so some of the big suppliers here today, they are the same suppliers that highways uses, people like Balfour Beatty, for example. And again, we’ve got those kind of silos. Some of that’s around commercial confidentiality, but there’s an awful lot that we could drive differently if we were willing to kind of take some of those barriers down and come together and create stuff.
HS2 isn’t the first major project in the UK that has developed a Learning Legacy. And a lot of how HS2 has set up its Learning Legacy is based on the learning legacies that have come before it.
An early promoter of Learning Legacy programmes was the 2012 London Olympics.
Karen Elson 04:57
Everybody was proud to work on the Olympics. That’s what it was. It was successful. They wanted to share what they had done. People wanted to hear what they had done, it was so very public. And it was a lot of social good. There was a big emphasis on that in the bid about legacy and social value. So London 2012 invested their time and resources in doing it.
Karen Elson is a chartered engineer with 25 years’ experience in the construction industry.
She was part of the London 2012 Olympic Delivery Authority and helped develop its Learning Legacy programme.
Karen Elson 05:41
So the Olympic Park was the first programme in a long time to be successful. And so we were inundated with inquiries about sharing lessons and good practice to such an extent that it was starting to overwhelm people. And everybody wanted to talk about the work that they were doing. But the leadership was concerned that it was starting to impact their resources. So the programme assurance office was asked to look at, what can we do? Where do we focus our resources? What value could we add to the industry in sharing the learning from the Olympic programme. And so I took on that role. And this is where Learning Legacy came about because the Olympics was all about designing for legacy. So it’s logical that this then became Learning Legacy.
The first step Karen took in creating the London 2012 Learning legacy was reaching out to industry to find out where they thought the best value was and where a Learning Legacy should focus its resources.
Karen Elson 06:45
So the plan was then to capture the learnings and the good practice and the innovation from the Olympic Park construction programme, and to share it with industry in a structured way.
Creating the legacy programme wasn’t all smooth sailing. While the industry was keen to learn from the London 2012 delivery, some in the supply chain weren’t necessarily so keen to share, and there were understandable concerns around intellectual property.
Karen Elson 07:14
IP was definitely an issue for the supply chain, the conversations that I was having at London 2012 with the supply chain on, why would they share this kind of knowledge? When they felt that they were publishing their IP, that conversation happened frequently. And we had to try and convince them of the benefits. There’s more benefits to sharing than there is to you know, holding it to yourself.
However, Karen had a carrot she could use to encourage knowledge sharing.
Karen Elson 07:47
There was a ‘no marketing’ policy for London 2012. And so the Learning Legacy by sharing technical content, it gave contractors and people the ability to share constructive knowledge without it being considered marketing. And that was the only way they could get it out there. And so that actually was quite a good way of selling it to the supply chain.
In the end between the supply chain, the Olympics Organising Committee, and the Olympic Delivery Authority, over 600 resources were published to the Olympic Learning Legacy website.
Karen Elson 08:24
And then we were very keen to make sure that the people behind the Learning Legacy were also featured. So all of the author details were on the website as well. But we had a speaking ambassador programme. So we asked the industry partners to host events and then they would invite people to come and speak about their Learning Legacy. So it was very much a collaboration with industry.
And so that became the London 2012 Learning Legacy. And it was really well received by the industry and was seen to be the first of its kind to share knowledge on such a large scale and so openly with the industry and across the world. Actually, there is a huge international interest in it. And it actually formed part of the international engagement for the London 2012 games. So it actually became quite a good sales asset in that respect.
And it wasn’t long before another major project that had begun a few years earlier took notice of the London 2012 Learning Legacy.
Simon Bennett 09:39
It was well known in the industry that the Olympics London 2012 had a Learning Legacy programme. And that’s when we’ve discovered a whole there’s this thing called Learning Legacy, look at what was done.
Simon Bennett is Associate Director for stakeholder engagement and Learning Legacy at Crossrail International and the former Head of Learning Legacy at Crossrail Limited.
Crossrail was the company set up by the Department for Transport to deliver London’s new Elizabeth Line.
Crossrail called on Karen to help create its own Learning Legacy programme. When she joined, one of the first things Karen did was to try to figure out how she could make Crossrail’s Learning Legacy even better than London 2012’s.
As the Crossrail project was already underway when the team started on the Learning Legacy programme, there was some catching up to do. They did not want to miss out on knowledge sharing opportunities from the work that had already begun.
Simon Bennett 10:32
So this was right back in 2011, Crossrail started getting the engineering function to write 2000-3000 word papers, and in combination with the Institution of Civil Engineers produced them as a hardback book. So they’ve done three of those before the Learning Legacy even happened. So the first thing we did, or first and Karen did when she came into the Crossrail was realised there was all this stuff, and if we could publish those, great, so when we launched the Learning Legacy, we already had some 60 odd papers, which had been written by the engineering function. And it’s still the case that the engineering topic area, the theme, and particularly the civil engineering topic area within it are a very, very big chunk, you know, percentage wise for the content on the Crossrail Learning Legacy.
But Karen and Simon also wanted to expand the type of content that was part of the Learning Legacy.
Karen Elson 11:25
There wasn’t a huge difference between the London 2012 and the Crossrail,
We followed the same kind of methodology. But we looked at how can we improve the technology. So instead of PDFs like it was in London, 2012, for example, we shared HTML pages. So we were very much around capturing lessons learned, good practice innovation, case studies, videos, good practice templates. One of the key learnings from London 2012, was it’s great to have people’s insight, but you need the detail behind it. And so we published the Crossrail management system. And those documents have been invaluable in enabling people to adapt the learning into their own project.
But Crossrail was only going to exist as a company up until the new line was complete.
Simon Bennett 12:24
So Crossrail ceased to exist in May 2023. At the point in which the Elizabeth line went to its full timetable. It was literally I think you’d be measured in days from once we got the signalling ready for doing that, the team was disbanded.
So Simon worked on ways to ensure that the Learning Legacy could live on beyond the project’s completion.
Simon Bennett 12:49
Throughout that process, I was talking to Transport for London to say we need to have an archive site, we need to have somewhere, I don’t want all this to just disappear.
So what we did was we turned the site into a static site so that it will no longer be updated.
But TfL took it on and it being static means that it now costs very little to host and that can be externally funded within TfLs overall web hosting budget.
Crossrail’s Learning Legacy remains available for anyone to read online with 840 total items uploaded across the project’s seven-year span.
But there is another organisation that has been working to make sure that all these learning legacies remain available to anyone who wants them and that’s the Major Projects Association.
Andy Murray 13:41
So the MPA has been running for just over 40 years. And it was set up initially by some academics who were pondering the question, ‘Does project management scale up? So do the regular approaches to projects, do they scale up for major projects? And if not, how are major projects different, and what sort of practices ought to apply when we’re running major projects? They concluded that regular project management didn’t scale up for major projects, there are factors like multiple organisations, the long timescales and various other aspects where there are additional practices that need to apply. And so that’s how the association was formed.
Andy Murray is the Executive Director of the Major Projects Association, the MPA.
There is a wealth of information being generated by projects, large and small. Technical papers, reports, presentations and much more are produced by project teams as a means to share information, sometimes just within an organisation but also with wider industry.
Collecting, curating and archiving that knowledge is a formidable challenge. But it is a challenge the Major Projects Association is playing a role in solving.
The MPA regularly holds seminars and publishes reports on project management for major projects. It developed its Knowledge Hub to archive all everything it has produced and then found itself archiving other people work.
Andy Murray 15:11
In addition to the knowledge that the MPA has produced through these seminars, and guides, and the studies that we commissioned, we also held third party content, where we have permission to, so examples from the National Audit Office or reports from the Infrastructure and Projects Authority, our members share us reports from time to time, and we put them into the same repository, and curate them in a way that makes them accessible and, linked, so that if you look at a particular report on a topic, you can also see other related reports or bits of knowledge.
In addition to that, we’ve also got the various learning legacies, historical ones, either archived on our site or a link to them from our sites. So, we have what we call API’s. So as these lessons learned reports, or these Learning Legacy study reports are produced, they automatically then appear on our website. So, we have that with HS2 for example. We’ve had it previously with Crossrail and we also have the Thameslink and the 2012 games learning legacies accessible via our site.
The development of the MPA’s Knowledge Hub and the willingness for organisations to have their material archived within it is a mark of just how far the industry has come since Karen first set up London 2012’s Learning Legacy programme.
Karen Elson 16:39
The Major Projects Association Knowledge Hub didn’t exist then. That came in just before the Crossrail Learning Legacy and I helped set that up. And that now is a really valuable single portal to enable the collation of all learning legacies that are a single hub, and ensure that they are maintained in legacy. So there wasn’t an awful lot of knowledge sharing before that. And I really do think the culture has shifted to a more open sharing culture.
By the time HS2 came along there was little doubt they were going to create their own Learning Legacy and Karen has been a key part of its development.
Karen Elson 17:17
The key difference with the HS2 Learning Legacy is much better technology, again, better search function. But they were pre pre-construction phase when we started the Learning Legacy. So, London 2012 was fully complete. And we published the Learning Legacy after substantial construction, Crossrail was about 60% complete, and HS2 was about 20% complete, but pre-construction. So that enabled us to capture a much different learning around how they set up the talent resources system, how they’ve done enabling works, which was all very retrospective, when we were at London 2012 trying to capture the enabling works.
Bridget Badoe McQuick 18:05
So, the beauty about HS2 is that we’ve started a lot earlier on the project. So, we have more opportunities to gather a lot more information from a wider spectrum.
And HS2 is experiencing the benefit of the learning legacies that came before, as supply chains are now far more willing to share their knowledge.
Karen Elson 18:26
That was another key feature, the engagement by the supply chain in the HS2 Learning Legacy. They were very engaged and at London 2012 and Crossrail it was more of a client driven, on HS2 it was very much the supplier driven. And they were really enthused. And I do think it’s a lot to do with the Social Value Act that’s come in, and it’s changed the culture of knowledge sharing, it’s not all about protecting my IP, which it used to be, it’s now very much wanting to publish good practice and showcase the work that they’re doing. And the Learning Legacy provides a platform to do that.
Starting your Learning Legacy early in a project’s life doesn’t just give you the chance to gather more data and release more papers, it also gives you more time to think about the goals of your Learning Legacy and how best to set it up.
Andy Murray 19:27
When the project finishes, the legacy of a major project isn’t just the physical asset or the system that’s been produced, but it’s also the opportunity to learn, in terms of project management practice or design management, or engineering or commercial management, or any of the different management disciplines, you always have that opportunity to learn, so thinking about the data you produce, how is it going to be used? And importantly, where is it going to go? I think there’s a critical thing to do. And the time to do that is right at the beginning not all the way through but get that thinking in early, know what’s needed, was going to be produced, who’s going to use it, and where will it go when the when the project finishes I think a key considerations that I advocate all major projects think about.
Bridget Badoe McQuick 20:23
I guess we’ve moved on in terms of understanding that we needed to do a lot more dissemination. This dissemination programme set, the legacy has kind of a three-part process so we capture content through challenges and competitions. And then we publish it on a dedicated website and then we have a dissemination programme.
HS2 is creating a Learning Legacy network of authors. This gives those who took time to write papers and contribute to the Learning Legacy the chance to go out and spread the message of their work. Because learning legacy content has such a lasting value for industry, academia & other major projects. Authors share their work as part of our dissemination programme. HS2 has partnerships with 12 key industry bodies & academic partners.
Bridget Badoe McQuick 21:07
And we’ve got 220 at the moment. And we invite them to come to events. So we had our Learning Legacy Live event back in October at the Science Museum, where we showcased four papers from authors so they showcase their papers, they had some questions and answers. So, they were able to showcase what they had done. So that’s basically what we do.
Since its official launch in October 2021, HS2’s Learning Legacy is well on track to be the most comprehensive legacy programme so far. Almost 200 resources have already been published and there are many more in the pipeline, a series of books has been released in partnership with the Institution of Civil Engineers, and a comprehensive events and dissemination programme is underway. There is also a dedicated website that attracts thousands of visitors from all over the world.
Karen Elson 21:59
So if you look at the website stats, you can see internationally the amount of organisations that are looking at Learning Legacy. Certainly, Canada is doing a huge amount of transit network work over there and I know that they are looking at the Learning legacy. We had Sydney at the Crossrail Learning Legacy launch. The programme director lead in the Sydney Metro works, he’s been using the Learning Legacy and he was even contributing to the events. So, it’s definitely global and Crossrail International is using that as a way to sell UK companies abroad. Which is one of the objectives of the Learning Legacy is to showcase UK PLC. And that was right from the start from London 2012, they saw the importance of showcasing what we were doing.
Across the rest of this mini-series we will look at the lessons learned from some of the papers that have been published on HS2’s Learning Legacy platform and we’ll hear from the authors themselves.
They span a wide variety of topics, from a new approach to design for stations, to implementing cutting edge climate innovations. We’ll hear how HS2 is making its sites some of the safest to work on and how this megaproject is harnessing data on an unprecedented scale to build out an entire project digital blueprint.
Each of these papers represents an opportunity to raise the standards of how we approach elements of major projects in the future. But these are just a handful of the hundreds of resources available as part of HS2’s Learning Legacy, with much more to come over the lifetime of this project’s construction.
The scale of HS2’s Learning Legacy, especially when combined with the existing learning legacies from the last decade, is giving the UK construction industry an opportunity to make one of its largest leaps forward.
Giles Thomas 24:17
Because these programmes are long, and take quite a considerable amount of time to, design, to plan, to then construct, and then make work. We engage different people at different points along the programme. So we’ve learned a huge amount about ground engineering, from London to Birmingham already.
Alison Walker 24:39
I think when you’re in it, you don’t realise that you are working on something that is so much of a step change for the industry. You’re doing your day-to-day job and looking forward a few years and working out what you need to do.
But looking back on it I’m really proud of what we’ve been able to do with HS2 and all my fantastic colleagues who’ve helped to get to this point. I think it is a real benefit for the wider benefit of industry, not just for the rail industry.
Kim Quazi 25:14
I think if I go back to, you know, moonshot projects, the great thing about those projects is they’re lasting legacy in terms of changing technologies and systems and all kinds of other pieces of thinking that change the world.
Jonny Neville 25:31
I think you can forget that we’re in this HS2 bubble sometimes where the amount of innovation that’s going on, you just started to think it’s just normal. And you can sometimes forget how innovative some of this stuff is. I know from reading some of the technical papers for other aspects of the geotechnical world, I’ve learned a lot and there’s some other fantastic things going around. So just sharing that wider is really important because then you can start to think that what you’re doing is just as business as usual by them actually is really great and is going to really be used going forward and to future projects.
Credits
I’ve been your host Rhian Owen. Thanks to our guests Clive Roberts, Bridget Badoe McQuick, Martin Sherlock, Karen Elson, Simon Bennet and Andy Murray. And with closing thoughts from Giles Thomas, Alison Walker, Jonny Neville and Kim Quazi.
You can get more detail on all the topics featured in this series by taking a look the HS2 Learning Legacy website, we have provided links in the episode description.
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