MachineMax’s Impact on HS2’s Mission to Drive Industry Change

HS2 has been working with Connected Places Catapult, the UK's innovation accelerator to help progress start-ups within the construction and technology industry to help accelerate innovation, reduce carbon, boost productivity, and drive industry step change. MachineMax were lucky enough to graduate from Cohort 3 in early 2022 and are now proud to play a key role in HS2’s carbon reduction and productivity mission.

The strategic and economic case for HS2 relies heavily on reducing the carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. By designing, building, and operating Europe's biggest infrastructure project whilst making sure it's resilient to climate change, HS2 is reducing and, where possible, eliminating emissions.

In 2016, HS2 challenged contractors to achieve a 50% reduction in carbon emissions relative to the construction baseline by 2030. They are making good progress and HS2 were able to report an overall emissions reduction of 24.6% in March 2021. Additionally, HS2 has committed to ‘Net Zero’ throughout the entire project by 2035, which requires collaboration among contractors and their supply chain being dedicated to the same goal.

HS2 has set strict emission requirements for all NRMM including excavators, dumpers, diggers, etc. Currently, these requirements exceed those of the Greater London Authority (GLA) and extend across the entire project. This is the first project outside of London to assign such strict emission requirements for Non-Road Mobile Machinery (NRMM).

MachineMax was given the opportunity to work with HS2 and their respective partners after being selected for the Connected Places Catapult (CPC) scheme. The scheme was put in place to help develop technology while receiving commercial advice and technical support. The model is working as the majority of participants have gone on to be successful and deliver proof of concepts with HS2 supply chain companies and joint ventures.

MachineMax graduated from the third cohort of innovation earlier this year working under the ‘Net Zero’ mission which focuses on data utilisation and use of digital technologies that can drive efficiencies in use of materials; energy and fuel; and management of construction site operations to help reduce carbon emissions.

Since then we have been a key contributor to HS2’s and CPC’s mission of accelerating innovation to reduce carbon, boost productivity and drive industry step change. MachineMax has worked with HS2 supply partners ALIGN JV, J.Murphy, SCS and Flannery Plant Hire to help reduce emissions aligning with project targets as well as providing the relevant data to enhance machine utilisation and site productivity.

Achieving this pledge requires effective communication and commitment among the supply chain partners. Companies using the MachineMax platform on their sites have been able to deliver improvement in emissions and fuel use by establishing targets using data provided by equipment management platform MachineMax. Each have demonstrated how this data can be used to make informed decisions to improve sustainability metrics, whilst meeting HS2’s challenge of project visibility.

If you are attending UK Construction Week, see Innovation Manager for HS2 – Jonathan Kelly, and MachineMax CEO – Shweta Saxena detail the use case for this relationship on Wednesday 5th October.