Hydrogen and the Construction Site: Cause for (Cautious) Optimism, Not Just Headlines

This blog was prompted by a recent piece in Highways News reporting that a British company has won what is described as the record-breaking hydrogen supply contract for the Lower Thames Crossing - the largest green hydrogen deal ever awarded in UK construction. Read the Highways News article here. It's a story worth pausing on, not just as an industry news item, but as a signal of something potentially more significant for the way we think about green infrastructure delivery.

There's a habit in infrastructure - and I've seen it enough times to call it a pattern - of treating a first-of-kind moment as though it were the solution itself. A press release, a ribbon cutting, a world record headline, and then the slow, complicated reality of embedding the change at scale. That risk exists with hydrogen too. But I want to be clear: what is happening right now on the Lower Thames Crossing is genuinely significant, and we should resist the urge to dismiss it as another green showcase.

The contract award to GeoPura reported by Highways News is the culmination of a procurement journey that has been building through 2025. In October last year, a British-made JCB hydrogen-combustion excavator began ground investigation work near Gravesend - the first time a hydrogen-powered digger had been deployed outside a test environment anywhere in the world. Within four weeks, National Highways reported it had already saved more than one tonne of CO₂ equivalent compared to a diesel machine. A trial earlier in the year at Gallagher's Hermitage Quarry in Kent had demonstrated a reduction of approximately 205kg of CO₂ per machine per week. These are real numbers, from real sites, in a real project environment - not laboratory conditions. (Sources: National Highways; Construction News; New Civil Engineer, October 2025.)

The Lower Thames Crossing has committed to a 70% reduction in construction carbon against its original calculations - a target written directly into its Development Consent Order - with an ambition to eliminate diesel entirely from its construction sites by 2027. The hydrogen supply contract now awarded is described as the largest of its kind in UK construction history, with an estimated value of up to £80M over eight years, covering up to 5,900 tonnes of low carbon hydrogen across the programme. The Thames Estuary Growth Board has estimated that the resulting hydrogen ecosystem in the Thames Estuary could be worth £3.8 billion GVA and generate 9,000 highly skilled jobs by 2035. (Sources: National Highways procurement notices; bidstats.uk.)

So we have evidence of technical viability, commercial commitment at significant scale, and plausible longer-term economic impact. That combination matters, because one of the most persistent barriers to green technology adoption in major projects is not the technology itself - it is the absence of credible demand signals that justify investment in supply chain capability. The scale of the LTC procurement is designed explicitly to give suppliers and contractors the confidence to invest in hydrogen-powered plant. That is how infrastructure projects can, at their best, catalyse systemic change rather than simply respond to it.

Here's the thing though - and this is where my professional lens naturally sharpens. The technology is the easier part. A hydrogen engine can be tested to 22,500 hours in a test cell and validated across 25,000km on a proving ground, as JCB has done. But deploying it effectively across a complex, multi-organisation construction programme - one with multiple delivery partners, supply chain tiers, rapidly evolving skills requirements, and carbon performance written into contractual obligations - demands something harder to engineer: genuine professional collaboration.

In our work at Advance, we define Professional Collaboration as "the ability, licence and courage for teams to openly discuss and resolve contentious subjects not only in a collaborative way but as a mechanism to reinforce the collaboration itself." Our 15 Elements framework, developed from three decades of experience with joint ventures, alliances, and major project delivery, identifies the cultural, structural, and systemic conditions that turn aspiration into operational reality. Eliminating diesel by 2027 across a live construction programme with multiple partners is not a technology procurement challenge — it is a collaborative delivery challenge. It requires commitment to a clear and common purpose that transcends individual organisational self-interest. It requires psychological safety that allows people to surface problems early. It requires accountability structures that are genuinely aligned with the outcomes the programme is trying to achieve.

As a B Corp certified business, Advance's commitment to sustainable and ethical practice is embedded in how we work, not bolted on as a marketing position. Our B Corp journey has reinforced something we already believed: that sustainability in business is about systems and culture, not just carbon accounting. It connects to our broader thinking on what sustainability really demands of us - and to our work supporting the infrastructure sector to build the collaborative capability needed to deliver genuinely complex, genuinely green, genuinely ambitious programmes.

The Lower Thames Crossing is not the answer to the infrastructure sector's carbon challenge. But it may be the most important proof of concept we have seen in a generation - provided the organisations delivering it can work together with the discipline, transparency, and courage that the ambition demands. The technology is ready. The question, as always, is whether the people and the partnerships are.

If you want to explore what Professional Collaboration looks like in practice on a complex infrastructure programme, explore our insights page or get in touch directly.

References

Highways News 

National Highways 

New Civil Engineer (October 2025)

Construction News (October 2025)

Thames Estuary Growth Board GVA estimate cited by National Highways

bidstats.uk (LTC procurement notice data).