Delivering rail innovation at speed and scale

“The barrier to innovation isn’t around the ideas and technology solutions, but actually in the setting up of the programme to accelerate that innovation and getting it through the valleys of death to implementation and realising the value.”

That’s the message from Tim Mangozza, technology expert at PA Consulting. He accepts that introducing new technologies to the rail network is complex and can take many years. However, it doesn’t need to be so complex; faster adoption can be achieved by aligning technical and commercial efforts.

This has been proven when the organisation worked alongside Network Rail’s Accelerated Innovation Programme, part of a £245 million research and development (R&D) portfolio in CP6.

“There were a lot of R&D projects which would take a long time to solve because they were technically difficult, there were others with lots of potential and no particular reason not to go for it and accelerate it as fast as you could,” added Steven Carden, innovation and technology expert based at PA’s Global Innovation and Technology Centre in Cambridge.

“The entire purpose of the work with Network Rail was to identify the blockers, which might be commercial, procurement, technical, operational, and then look to tackle them and bring the innovation into service much more quickly.

“Making things happen at pace was transformational. We were making decisions 83 per cent faster. The most important thing was that those decisions were stickier. All of the information was there.”

Tim added: “Infrastructure innovation needs to be redesigned from a technology led portfolio to an investment portfolio, with a clear return on investment. We promoted an approach in Network Rail which focused on prioritising and accelerating value – something we’re also doing with HS2’s innovation team.

“HS2 has that mandate for change in its portfolios and programmes because it is a capital programme, and it is working closely and collaboratively with the supply chain to find out what the innovations are that can be invested in. That is a step change in the programme going forward.” Steven and Tim are part of a 4,000 strong team at PA, featuring strategists, innovators, designers, consultants, digital experts, scientists, engineers, and technologists, across PA’s offices and technology centres in the UK, US, Ireland, the Nordics and Netherlands.

They are excited by the opportunities of rail reform, and particularly by GBRX, the sector’s strategic innovation body working to unlock the opportunities of innovation and advanced technology.

Its mission, to accelerate sector innovation across track and train to increase productivity, improved performance, and enhanced passenger experience, is very much aligned to that of those at PA Consulting.

Tim said: “This is an opportunity to put passenger and freight customers first and at the heart of the conversation. Under rail reform there won’t be this invisible line between track and train, it will all be about how we can make the railway work better and what impact innovation can have. GBRX can be the platform to push that through.

“For example, PA is part of a consortium with TfL, Monorail, and Academia to develop a world first quantum-based rail positioning system for GNSS denied environments. TfL are able to run multiple trials because they ‘own’ the whole railway, train, track and operations, making them more agile. For the mainline, even running a one-off trial would have taken months of negotiations across multiple commercial parties, delaying progress and limiting opportunities for learning. We could get a lot more innovation delivered and deployed, if we just worked more collaboratively as an industry.”

Steven added: “In the rail industry we beat ourselves up when it comes to innovation, but actually there are lots of great things happening, some of which we are taking to the likes of the nuclear and national highways sectors.

“Having said that, there is the opportunity to be better at innovation, particularly now with purse strings tightening, but it is worth the effort, especially if we are to deliver a more efficient and cost effective industry.”

This article was originally published in Rail Director on page 23.