Day One at Conference

With a jam-packed agenda, the first day of the 2023 RIA Innovation Conference included keynote speeches, Tech Talks, Exhibitor Spotlights and a TOC Pitch Sessions.

We look forward to seeing attendees again tomorrow for Day Two!

Making the positive case for rail

RIA Chief Executive Darren Caplan welcomed delegates and said how much he was looking forward to the next two days. He said the future of the rail industry looks positive, with passenger numbers last month hitting 100% of pre-Covid levels, and revenues up to 90%.

So instead of planning for managed decline, the railways need to be preparing for growth and delivering more capacity, and innovation will be essential to do that.

Rail & HS2 Minister Huw Merriman MP then joined the conference by video link. He picked up on Darren’s theme, stating that research and innovation will provide the industry with ways to meet the twin challenges of decarbonisation and growing the railway in future.

The UK has a long record of creativity and innovation in rail, the Minister said, and Great British Railways will place huge emphasis on working with industry to achieve success.

Stakeholders’ view

Network Rail’s Chief Technology Officer Robert Ampomah took the opportunity to remind everyone that innovation on the railway is not new, referring to the industry’s “historic roots” of being creative in both thinking and technology.

Network Rail's four priority areas are to make the railway cost-effective and financially sustainable, to ensure safety and security, to promote reliable performance and increased capacity and to improve sustainability.

Robert described four recent examples of innovation adopted by Network Rail: the Flowbridge footbridge, Wave Walker being used to reinforce sea defences at Dawlish, digitised lineside inspection and the increased use of drones.

Achila Mazini, Industrial Engagement Fellow at the University of Birmingham, followed, speaking on behalf of UKRRIN. She explained the connection and collaboration between universities and industry, and outlined how UKRRIN’s centres of excellence are helping to improve capacity, productivity and performance on the UK railway.

Her colleague Holly Foss talked of the role of education in innovation, which she said was “all about people”. The universities therefore need to foster the best environments to motivate innovators and give them the best opportunity to innovate.

Matt Chuter is VP Commercialisation, Defence and Security, at Ploughshare, the government-owned company that spins out technology from the Ministry of Defence. He spoke to delegates about the similarities between technologies used in the defence industry and rail industries. Both operate complex vehicles and machinery, both have large, diverse and skilled workforces and both have safety as a priority.

Looking to the future

After delegates had time for some networking and to take a look at the exhibition stands, the late-morning session started with Howard Mitchell, Head of Innovation at HS2 and Timothy Mangozza from management consultants PA Consulting.

Howard used a slide from his presentation the previous year, updating delegates on how the innovation process at HS2 had progressed since then. “Innovation is a team sport,” he said, adding that HS2 now works with 25 innovation start-ups compared with 10 a year ago, with £350 million in savings already enabled for Phase 1 of the project.

Tim explained PA Consulting’s role in facilitating innovation. Current systems are not capable of delivering innovation quickly enough, he said, so they needed to be improved and streamlined.

Rufus Impey, who is Lead Strategic Partner with the Great British Railways Transition Team, addressed the conference next. He talked about how research, development and innovation sits in the railway’s long-term strategy, but the industry needs to do things differently and not get stuck in the various “valleys of death” that occur in the lifetime of a project. He commented how GBR will need to influence the existing landscape in terms of public funding, train operations and the supply chain.

Following a great networking lunch, eight exhibitors were given 10 minutes each to make their pitch to delegates, highlighting the features of their exhibits. Those exhibitors were:

Connected Places Catapult
University of Nottingham
Complete Cyber
Phoenix Contact
One Big Circle
Transmission Dynamics
Camlin Rail
Network Rail

While those 'spotlights' were taking place, invited representatives of several companies were introducing their products and services to a panel of train operator procurement executives.

Innovative products

Delegates took their places back in the auditorium for a keynote speech from Maximilian Eichhorn, VP Digital Products and Services at Knorr-Bremse, who talked about the opportunities and challenges that digital systems bring. Operators with train fleets from different manufacturers have to deal with differing digital systems and standards, but even trains from the same builders can include different subsystems using different data protocols. These have to be made to talk with each other so that the data can also be shared with all interested stakeholders, which itself raises the question of who owns the data and what can legally be shared.

Then it was time for some Tech Talks, a series of short presentations by some well-known innovators:

Milda Gircyte, Head of Product of CrossTech, introduced the conference to Hubble, an automate lineside inspection tool that uses machine learning to detect faults such as vegetation obscuring signs and signals.
Andy Willetts, Senior Mobility Account Manager for Bentley in Northern Europe, and Shervin Yousefzadeh, Digital Construction Manager for the Transpennine Route Upgrade with BAM Nuttall, combined to talk about the Digital Ecosystem, which allows managers to make informed decisions, keeping track of progress using the system’s Project Dashboard.
Patrick Dobson, Rail Segment Lead UK & Ireland, Schneider Electric, was joined on stage by C2C’s Paul Meenan as they discussed Smart Electrical Infrastructure and the technology being installed at Barking station. This pilot programme was, said Paul, not solely for the benefit of C2C but also for the wider industry.
Mick Corner, Field Operations Director, Alstom, and James Connolly, Head of Client Partnerships, eviFile, explained how they are replacing paper processes with digital equivalents, particularly for the assurance of signalling installations and testing.
Emily Kent, Co-Founder, One Big Circle, introduced AVIR, the on-train video system that “enables you to see what you need to see”. Video data is transferred from trains to computer screens for analysis while being combined with other data sources such as the hazard directory. It’s all about safety and having fewer boots on ballast doing inspections, Emily said, adding that an hour on AVIR can also save eight hours on track.