Background
The HS2 Euston project enabling works phase forms a critical component of the UK government’s HS2 programme, led by the DfT and HS2 Ltd, to deliver a new high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham and beyond. Critical to this project is the extension of HS2 into central London, including the construction of twin 4.5-mile tunnels between Old Oak Common and Euston, alongside the development of an integrated transport hub at Euston. The works encompass tunnel excavation and lining, station delivery, redevelopment of the existing Euston station and upgrades to London Underground connections. The project is expected to unlock substantial economic and urban development potential, with estimates indicating up to £41 billion in economic benefit by 2053, thousands of new homes, and tens of thousands of new jobs expected to be created, while also enhancing rail capacity and overall connectivity. This is planned to be delivered as part of a wider programme reset to ensure safe and efficient delivery, the Euston scheme will ultimately be managed by the Euston Delivery Company (EDC), with a focus on integration, cost control, and long-term performance of a major national transport system.
The M&M Effect
M&M’s role focused particularly on enabling practical behavioural skills within the existing delivery model and providing team support to how teams across the Integrated Project Team (IPT) work together on a day-to-day basis. This approach allowed M&M to work across multiple workstreams, engage a broad range of stakeholders, and identify common challenges, pain points and opportunities to enhance performance and IPT culture.
Throughout 2025, M&M’s work focused on optimising collaboration, communication, and efficiency across the IPT as it operated within a delivery-led matrix structure. The focus was on practical improvements that could be implemented quickly and adapted as the project evolved and developed.
Our support included:
- Targeted half-day team workshop for key sub teams to provide collaboration expertise
- A series of leadership and cross-functional IPT and key stakeholder workshops that involved bringing together delivery and functional teams, building relationships, and addressing shared challenges
- Embedding coaching for Delivery Leads, Senior Project Managers (SPM), and key team members to support leadership capability and support cross-team communication
- Team collaboration advice and meeting attendance and facilitation across the 3 key workstreams
- Providing leadership and Senior Management Team support, including co-creating ways or working and improving team alignment
- Meeting optimisation, improving structure, attendance, and effectiveness across the IPT
The Result
Our work delivered noticeable improvements in how teams collaborated and operated:
- Improved communication and relationships across Delivery Leads, enabling more effective problem-solving
- Improved meeting efficiency by reducing durations, strengthening preparation, structure, and engagement, and ensuring only essential attendees were included, freeing up valuable time across the project
- Increased accountability at team and PM level through clearer ownership and challenge
- Enhanced contribution and engagement in key meetings such as WWP
- Strengthened alignment across IPT teams and improved overall team dynamics
In Their Words
The team have been impressed with how M&M have embedded themselves into key meetings and built trust amongst PMs, SPMs and Delivery Leads. Some team frustrations that have clearly been apparent but not communicated have emerged in the last few weeks which are enabling us to address. In a short space of time, M&M have identified core issues/opportunities for improvement. Several team members have proactively passed positive feedback regarding their coaching sessions. Meeting effectiveness has improved… key meetings are more dynamic, people speak more positively and body language is better.
Our Take
This complex project demonstrates the importance of consistent collaboration and clear ways of working, as well as the need to leverage collaborative opportunities of the contract model. By embedding within the project and focusing on practical changes, we were able to support teams to enhance meeting effectiveness, strengthen relationships, and operate more efficiently within the delivery structure. These practical incremental changes helped create a more aligned and collaborative IPT, better equipped to manage and adapt to ongoing challenges and support future phases of the project as it continues to evolve.
