Supply Chain Priorities

In crafting the key asks of this paper, RIA surveyed its membership through winter 2022 to discern which digital issues were causing the most concern in the near term. We asked our members to rank a series of concerns or suggest their own most pressing issue. This figure shows the responses to this survey. Open access, standards and cyber-security were the top three areas of concern respectively. Of the members who stated ‘other’, suggestions included the quality of data, the lack of customer- or user-centricity, and the robustness of existing data streams.

Cyber-threats and other future concerns

Increasing global connectivity brings with it increasing exposure to the risk of malicious actors attacking systems. Motivations vary, from state actors acting for destabilisation or espionage, criminal/terrorist organisations with the goals of raising funds, or protest groups in raising awareness. RIA explored basic cybersecurity concerns in its recent 5G Technical Guide27. Cyber threats, and resistance to them, could fill a paper alone, and the potential to disrupt the lives and safety of our citizens is the reason so much resource – public and private – has been dedicated to the topic. It is worth noting:

• Other state entities, with recently installed and professionally managed IT systems have been hacked in recent years, for example the NHS. Other industries have rolled out safety- and operationally-critical connected devices for their operation – for example traffic lights, smart motorways, and across aviation.

• Overseas rail operators and manufacturers have been the target of significant cyber attacks which have caused fleet and network outages.

Threats continue to evolve at an alarming rate, and this evolution requires ongoing vigilance from the entire specification, supply, and system ownership chain.

Alongside the threat of those trying to break cryptography for malicious means is the possibility that peaceful research into quantum computing techniques will lead us to the same ends. Quantum computers40 promise an enormous leap in the number of computations which can be performed concurrently – essentially solving problems which are intractable for our current computers. Some of those intractable problems are the complex puzzles required to solve the underlying encryption algorithms upon which many of our most secure systems are based – the example at the forefront of public imagination likely to be banking. Clearly this would have much wider implications that just in the railway industry. However, encryption has always been an arms race between codemakers and codebreakers – and the advent of Quantum computing will bring with it more advanced cryptographic techniques. There is significant research work ongoing in both parallel fields, including in the UK41

RIA’S KEY ASKS

To enable, expediate and ensure the success of the UK railway’s digital transition, RIA has six clear asks of Government, policymakers and clients. The remainder of the document is dedicated to exploring them.

Key Ask 1:

The railway’s digital transition requires leadership, strategy, and action, starting now.

The UK railways will undergo a digital transition. Nobody, neither customers, suppliers, nor clients can afford to wait until years after the formation of Great British Railways to have strong crossindustry leadership, to define a strategy, or for solid commitment to the correct change and investment.

• RIA supports the creation of Great British Railways and welcomes continued investment in the railway sector alongside cross-party recognition of it’s importance as the greenest and most inclusive transport mode of choice.

• However, timelines for the creation of GBR are opaque at best, and limited detail is published on intentions for a large part of GBR’s critical contractual and technical functionality.

• The spectre of such a seismic future change has created a hiatus in decision making and procurement for the operational railway. The supply chain is feeling this impact, and this is especially true in the agile digital space.

• Several key operational and legacy systems are due for replacement or upgrade before GBR will reach full functionality. These are critical systems upon which the whole railway operation depends. We have a golden opportunity to upgrade these systems rather than replacing like-for-like, but replacement cannot wait.

• The world outside is changing quickly, yet skills and organisational capabilities can take years to develop. Cybersecurity is a significant concern, and threats are fast-evolving – malicious actors will not wait for the railway industry to catch up either.

We need leadership to ensure the success of the Rail Data Marketplace. If the purpose and trust are lost in data quality then adoption and use of the Rail Data Marketplace will become a challenge.”

Change initiatives need to happen in the railway industry with the adoption of a digital culture that would support a better data intelligence and digital technologies, having the clarity on data ownership and owner responsibilities in terms of data accuracy and data sharing.”

Consistency is Key

RIA’s Electrification Cost Challenge report43 highlights that it is consistency which is of prime importance for the supply chain to delivery ontime and at budget. This consistency needs to be in line with a strategy owned by a guiding mind with ‘the greater good’ of the railway at the forefront of its thinking. Currently, disparate standards and investment, and worse – siloed operations leading to duplication of effort – are stifling the data and digital space in just the same manner. We wish to see a strong guiding mind offering decisive actions, owning the vision, showing a clear direction and strategy, and owning that strategy through to delivery.

The International Union of Railways

UIC highlights the need to create innovative and sustainable technical solutions, aimed at increasing its competitiveness while considering not only single domains, but the railway system as a whole42

• Each individual organisation has its own strategy and direction and there is much good practice in isolated silos. But there is a lack of consistency, topdown thought leadership, commitment to any given strategy, or indeed, funding to follow it through (See Key Ask 4).

• There are many competing interests in the data and digital world, and not all are for the benefit of the railway or its customers. We therefore think a whole-industry strategy should be created by a neutral body, appointed to take a cross-industry and cross-supply chain view. The UKRRIN Digital Systems Centre of Excellence may be ideally placed to provide this.

Clients of capital projects should insist on data centric delivery, but there is no policy for this. Most suppliers only deliver contractual minimum. Clients are lacking knowledge and skill to instruct suppliers to provide data and legacy, and therefore efficiencies. The Governance for Railway Investment Projects (GRIP) has fragmented the design process. GRIP3 needs to consider GRIP8 requirements (hand back). The data lifecycle in not considered leaving GRIP 5-8 with little to no data to provide efficiencies.”

The biggest challenges working with railway data for us are:

1. Knowing the data exists.

2. Finding a business owner who can supply the data to us.

3. Keeping the data updated from the master source of data.

Creating a ‘golden source’ repository of railway reference data, easily consumable by anyone, would be a big step to item 3. The Rail Data Marketplace is a massive step towards this, but it is not the full solution.”

Cultural Awareness

Bringing a wide cultural awareness, including an appreciation of digital adoption can only be led by a central strategy – whether in clients or suppliers. This is especially true with cyber security concerns, which are constantly evolving and need to be kept at the forefront of every staff member’s consciousness with ever evolving threats.

An Independent review?

Our introduction shows the landscape of data and digital in rail is large and complex, touching nearly every aspect of our industry. Many organisations are competing for business – both RIA members and otherwise – and many of them are quick to highlight the benefits of their particular solution. These benefits may be valid in isolation, but without a central strategy, systems which should be linked may continue to be siloed, restricting those potential benefits. This is why RIA recommend that an independent review of all digital rail systems be carried out, in a giant mapping exercise, including interactions. This should include projected

Leadership and strategy around the standardisation and central negotiation of core/common industry datasets would be a good starting point. For the more customer-specific data requirements, a standard set of terms and conditions as well as a template pricing models/ structures, would also be useful.”

No supplier wants to develop 20 custom systems for 20 different train operators, and no passenger wants 20 different apps. Great British Railways doesn’t clarify this position as we still don’t know the level of autonomy Passenger Service Contracts will bring. All the talk sounds like general progress in the right direction but we have yet to see anything concrete that the supply chain can get its teeth into. Really, we need leadership, solid decisions and commitment, and we need them now.”

The Railway Technical Strategy

We believe data and digital leadership and strategy should borrow heavily from the plans established in the Railway Technical Strategy. However, this strategy is technical rather than organisational, operational or commercial. True leadership needs to take all of these factors into account.

decommissioning dates to inform future public investment strategies, and development strategies for private sector. We believe this review should be independent of Government, client, or supplier, and carried out by an organisation without commercial interest. The UKRRIN Centre of excellence in Digital Systems17 may be ideally placed to provide this. This is not to suggest central control, but rather a strategic framework within which businesses and innovators can see opportunities and deliver increased benefits against, at most, outcome requirements.

As an industry there needs to be a central and representative voice that Train Operating Companies can work with and trust to take decisions on their behalf. A forum where people come along with open minds and willingness to work together. We need to remember that TOCs are the customer touch point.”

We worry that too much promise is being placed on the Rail Data Marketplace as the solution to all railways data problems. We need to remember it is a trading platform, it needs continued buy-in and continued commitment from organisations to be successful. Currently we get a very minimal level of support from clients as they are under-resourced for this and lack internal processes. With its launch, we have a golden opportunity to ensure the right investment and accountability.”

Key Ask 2:

The UK workforce need to be empowered: through upskilling and creating the right culture.

Technology does not exist in a vacuum. At the heart of every process, digital or otherwise, are people. Railways need a cross-industry drive to ensure the employees have the right skills for the new digital world, and we need to empower those people through widespread cultural and organisational change to reap the full rewards.

• Humans are involved in nearly all processes, especially so, where change and adaptation are involved.

It is often organisations, processes or job descriptions that act as blockers to achieving the full benefits of any innovative techniques, not the technologies themselves, even when individual staff members are keen to progress. Digitisation of technical elements without organisational change and the relevant skills is a dead end.

• The maintenance technician, signaller, director or customer relations professional of the future will need a very different skillset to today. This needs to be recognised through funding of and provision for the correct training alongside recognition of new qualifications.

• Railways have a great number of extremely competent professionals specialising in management of traditional assets, but surprisingly few specialising in the management of data – when data is perhaps the most critical and valuable asset.

• We need a cross-industry drive to concentrate on upskilling people and empowering them through cultural change. Organisations need to adapt, becoming more agile and open to collaborating –especially around digital innovation.

• This cannot be delayed. The digital transition is happening now and these skills are already in demand; both from within our industry and from competing recruiters. Again, cybersecurity concerns will not wait.

AI: The great time-saver?

According to the National AI Strategy29 , 80% of the time spent on an AI project is cleaning, standardising, and making the data fit for purpose. Whilst over the long-term, AI may be a timesaver, during a transition to the use of digital techniques (and not just AI), additional resource is needed: and that resource is significantly different to what exists in most organisations. It consists of unique engineering skills. Through understanding that the cost is in the people and organisational change, senior leaders need to build this into funded change programmes. The same leaders need to help ensure the wider workforce understands that change in line with the outside world is the only way to survive.

Government Tech Priorities

‘Building a tech-savvy nation’ by supporting skills for the future is one of the Government’s ten tech priorities43 . The Department for Culture, Media and Sport go on to say:

We want every adult to have a base level of digital and cyber skills so that no-one is left behind by the digital revolution. Our apprenticeships, digital bootcamps and the Digital Entitlement will help set people up for the highly-skilled, highly-paid roles of the future, and give them the confidence to use the internet safely and securely, while our £520 million Help-to-Grow scheme will empower 100,000 businesses to adopt the latest tech.

Existing initiatives such as the National Skills Academy for Rail (NSAR) and UKRRIN are ideally placed to support these activities. Their role needs to be championed and funding guaranteed, independently of political changes.

There is often a disconnect between the mindset and understanding of agile startups and of larger organisations. The UK railway industry may benefit from training staff in both to have a better understanding of the processes, structure and concerns of the other.

Support and understanding from the C-suite is critical to the adoption of data intelligence and digital technologies. Legal/ contractual experience is an issue. Predefined, clear and easy to access contracts to support legal teams with little experience in the digital space will help organisations to quickly and efficiently adopt these emerging technologies.”

The importance of data needs high level organisation commitment. HS2’s digital twin vision is a good example of this.”

The railway runs on data. We are harvesting it at petabytes per month, but our ability to exploit that requires a skillset the majority of the industry don’t have.”

Our biggest challenge is the reluctance of customer organisations (for example, but not limited to Network Rail, GBR, etc) to talk to us about what we can do to help them. Representatives from these and other organisations stand up at conferences and say they need help in the areas of data and digitisation, but then when approached they cannot engage – is this organisational?”

There is a requirement for business level digital teams, not project teams attempting to do everything, and widespread acknowledgement and upskilling of railway stakeholders. There is a widespread void of BIM/digital competence across the railway.”

There is a lack of understanding at senior level about the benefits of digitalisation, and sometimes an inability to filter out the hype surrounding it. Demonstrating value and sharing industrial experience is often the best way to showcase these, but requires the time from seniors and the setup of an environment to showcase.”

Other Industries

Key digital innovators from outside rail concentrate on the changes required, or brought about by, the novel technology and its effect upon people. Some good examples from the consumer world include Uber and Airbnb. Their success comes from being built around people’s lives in addition to the underlying technology. However, this is not just about apps – in the commercial and engineering world the same applies, such as in our earlier example of Rolls Royce’s power by the hour business model37

Empowering our staff

It is not enough to gather copious amounts of data or to introduce new digital practices to a business. Teams need to have enough time in their day-to-day activities to convert data into intelligence and be empowered to act on it. There also needs to be a clear and accessible process to train existing teams, or resources to recruit someone with relevant skills. Staff need to be educated that roles will change: there needs to be vision and understanding amongst the workforce and this starts at the top. Culture is formed by workforces with common goals. The end goal is not a static state – it is an organisation able to adapt and change as technology, customer expectations and cyber threats also do so.

A large focus should be on reviewing the role of the IT organisations in companies. Today, most IT teams focus on keeping current state services running and maintaining security of existing infrastructure. Few companies are looking at the people, process and tools side of how IT organisation need to evolve to encompass citizen developments i.e. home grown applications and services as well as effectively managing the rapid changes of their IT estates. IT is still seen as an overhead not as a core development and innovation area. Allowing citizen development is a key first step to empowerment.”

There also seems to be a lack of understanding in client organisations that the adoption of new digital and data-based practices will mean that organisational processes need to change to enable the new approaches to be effective.”

Culture change is a transformation not a project – projects have defined starts and ends. Culture change is constant.”

The right people and organisations in the right roles

We need to clearly define where the roles and responsibilities of different people – and organisations – begin and end. What is the role of the operator? Asset owner? Manufacturer? Defining roles and responsibilities in organisations will help to empower the right actors.

The complex railway ecosystem is prohibitive to new entrants from outside the sector, with barriers present in policy, procurement, culture, and process, where misaligned costs and benefits prevent the justification of investment. A clear path to market with a simple benefit and reward structure will stimulate private sector investment in skills and facilities There is no onesize-fits-all approach, but personnel at all levels should be coached to understand the value of, and how to enable, innovation.

Key Ask 3:

The freight or passenger customer of the 2020s is not the customer of the 1990s, and the customer of the 2030s will have even greater service and information expectations. The world is forever changing. Collaboratively, across the clientsupplier interface, we need to constantly ensure our offering reflects these expectations.

The availability of data, and digital ubiquity, has changed the expectations of the retail customer beyond recognition since the dawn of the information age. Although the railway’s offering has evolved over time, it is fair to say it has not kept pace with customer expectations in many areas 44 45

• If applied correctly, digital techniques can help improve the passenger experience in a number of areas. This includes customer information provision, both ahead of and during the journey, at times of disruption, account and payment options. Accessibility considerations, and provision of vital information which makes journeys accessible to all, needs to be built in from the ground up.

However, systems which lead to a ‘good’ experience are not limited to customer interactions. For

The user experience of the railway in Great Britain: an evidence paper

This paper45 was the result of the evidence collection work conducted during the Williams Review. It clearly states:

…many passengers are not getting the experience they expect from rail travel with satisfaction now at its lowest in 10 years. Recent passenger experience has not been good enough. Delayed delivery of major infrastructure enhancements and the failed introduction of the May 2018 timetable have negatively impacted railway performance, passenger satisfaction and public trust. The significant disruption of 2018 was experienced on top of the issues that customers see day-to-day. Great Britain’s rail network is near or above capacity in some areas, meaning that the network is not always able to offer passengers the experience they expect, and that even minor disruptions can have significant impacts. 8 Freight operators are often unable to secure the level of access to the network that would enable them to grow their businesses and enable their customers’ businesses to expand.

The National Rail Passenger Survey

Transport focus last ran the National rail passenger survey in 202044 . The survey breaks satisfaction down into a range of key parameters. It is not always clear which problems could be solved by getting the right data to the right person at the right time, but there are a few standout examples: example, remote condition monitoring can enable early interventions to prevent asset failures –reducing disruption and cancellations46

• 60% of passengers nationally are dissatisfied with the reliability of internet connections or WiFi provision on the railway infrastructure. 25% of respondents are not satisfied with provision of information during the journey.

• Only 45% of passengers nationally are satisfied with the usefulness of information about delays.

• 20% of respondents were not satisfied with connections with other forms of transport.

• Ticketing – both pricing and myriad, complex options – are widely mistrusted by the public47, and recent Government reform on ticketing has been ineffectual48 . Outside major conurbations, ticketing options are not integrated with the wider transport ecosystem. This integration is vital, and open data is key to that – no-one wants to end their journey at a station!

• Even as the greenest transport mode, we need to recognise we are competing to attract customers, and that those customers have an ever-wider choice, including not travelling at all.

Digital technologies often offer a better service proposition at lower outlay, as seen in the examples of Amazon, Uber, or Airbnb. RIA members have

We need greater emphasis on users. Those responsible for system should be considering if the data held could give the user more useful information and whether this could be provided in a more useful way. The University of Hull’s freight train planning initiative illustrates this point.”

Decentralisation of data is very important to make better use of rail data for the society and the travel ecosystem. Stakeholders within the rail industry should devise a policy of not holding back the data if it helps to provide a better service.”

Digital Maintenance

Customer-centricity isn’t limited to the customer facing elements of our network. One good example of a system perhaps ‘invisible’ to the customer but which could make a real difference is remote condition monitoring (RCM)46 . Warning of a fault or failure in an asset – whether infrastructure or rolling

Freight and Flexibility

Traditional freight flows have been fixed and regular – e.g. coal from mines to power stations. But as societal trends change, the requirement for flexibility and information will become ever more prevalent. If the railway is to permanently capture additional freight markets, then it must listen to customer requests – and alongside rail’s already green and low-cost credentials, these include flexibility to demand and better information provision49 developed a plethora of technologies and products to this end, but a scattergun approach will not work – there needs to be strong leadership, clear strategy, and unified approach to core changes: Potential freight and passenger customers will not be convinced to switch to rail by another app telling them why their train is late.

For the passengers – from door to door, supported by technology, underpinned by data. Any changes are intelligently served to the users. Equally, simple aspects that make such a difference to some passengers – like whether station assets such as toilets and lifts are working. Pertinent information that makes it friction free for all.” stock – can have a huge impact upon the service quality delivered. RCM is in the process of being rolled out on national infrastructure and has been in use on newer trains for some time. However, there are potentially significant extra benefits from examining disparate data sources to spot patterns.

Barriers

A simple yet powerful illustration: Our railway places barriers – literally as well as figuratively –between passengers and the service we provide. There are no barriers to getting in a private car. In some other countries – Hong Kong for example – ticket barriers remain open unless it is seen a passenger should not pass – but the gates are still there. Yet there are digital systems in existence that could reduce or remove barriers completely, but which we have not adopted. Even without physical barriers, outside London, our ticketing system – our main source of revenue – is antiquated when compared to account-based systems in use in other industries and countries.

Keep an eye on the ‘why’!”

We should have a railway where organisations work together collaboratively to maintain a strong focus on delivering for the customer. Put aside disputes and differences to come to an agreement on things such as investments and priorities to create a more consistent and a compelling offer for the customer. Open data plays a large part in that.”

All the info to make an end-to-end journey a great experience is available in the back end, but it is not made available or presented in a neat format to our passengers. Perhaps this is because there are about 25 train and 5/6 freight operators and a plethora of asset types, methods of data collection, related but unlinked databases – If we could just join the right dots then we could work wonders. But a lack of standardisation and a lack of clarity of ownership are two things that hold us back. If we could crack those, we open up more innovation opportunity.”

I suspect passengers don’t really care about rail issues in the way that railway people do! We’re very good at telling a passenger their train is cancelled or delayed because of train crew availability or due to a points failure, but we don’t add a simple ‘therefore you should use this alternative route’, and rarely automatically compensate or make good on the inconvenience! This is not user friendly. Yet all of these extras are easy with the tech in our pockets!”

Key Ask 4: Invest in Innovation. Invest In Implementation.

The railway is an experienced creator and user of data; however, digital capabilities are evolving at what would have been, decades ago, an unthought of pace. The industry needs to open itself up to different ideas from new and experienced innovators both in rail and other industries. This will require investment in innovation, implementation, and the business changes that go with it.

• Innovation is a change programme which delivers business benefits. That change requires investment, but it is an investment that pays back. It is estimated that Network Rail’s £245m Research and Development funding between 2019 and 2024 will create a gross value added of £1.6bn over 20 years. It is recognised that successful innovation brings rewards. The more radical the innovation, often the greater the benefits, but the commercially and technically risk-averse nature of our industry prevents the paths to those innovations ever happening.

• There needs to be an acceptance in the investment process for incremental and radical innovation ideas, and space to fail. Recognise that some of these ideas will fail to be implemented as anticipated, but those that are will adequately pay back the losses. Lessons learned from these failures should be circulated within the innovation population, allowing future innovators to be better prepared for the challenges.

The industry should look to other, nontransport industries to adopt best practice. Manufacturing or e-commerce for example.”

We don’t have to re-invent the wheel when there are already things ready to deploy. The problem is that the deployment requires investment. Investment is a long-term commitment, and our industry is always looking for short-term returns.”

Research, development, and innovation: how do we define these terms?

Research and development refer to the processes of paper or laboratory study, and physical creation and advancement, respectively. Research and development are vitally important, but until their application, would not typically bring benefits to a business. They are concerned with knowledge creation, and capability/technique demonstration.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines innovation as ‘the introduction of new things, ideas, or ways of doing something’. The key word is ‘introduction’ – innovation is the beginning of the process to turn something novel into business as usual. At some point on this journey, the expenditure of resources will be offset by the business benefits, meaning the innovation represents a ‘net-gain’.

Research, development, and innovation all require funding, but, with a few exceptions, innovation is where the business begins to change, and that funding begins to pay back 8

The Railway Safety and Standards Board are leading on a collaborative piece of work to create a common language around these definitions to ensure the correct understanding during discussions within, and outside, our industry. This work will feed into the Whole Industry Strategic Plan.

Innovations should fund themselves, given enough time – whether that’s by driving modal shift for extra revenue or saving money. But they require up-front investment and longerterm commitment.”

Data needs to be used to understand the implications of climate change on asset resilience and how investment plans need to be changed (eg to cater for sea level rise).”

We should run smaller trial projects, aimed solely at SME’s to provide a route to innovation at lower risk to clients.”

We need to innovate faster. Our speed of change is not good. We need to be leaner thorough implementation.”

Investment in the Rail Data Marketplace is a positive step, but we need to continue this with the investment from data-holding organisations to enable them to provide robust and timely data for trading. Eventually this investment will pay the industry back as the benefits of sharing are seen, but that will be a few years away.”

Innovation: Government policy and opportunity for growth

Despite small bubbles of best practice, RIA’s 2022 research8 evidenced railway innovation to be underfunded when compared to formal targets published by the Government, and under-supported, when compared to best practice. Worse, the path to adoption into business-as-usual for even trivial change is fraught with roadblocks. Investment in innovation and particularly digital innovation is of importance to more than just the railway industry. Innovation is highlighted as a flagship Government priority, both within and outside the railway industry, and best-practice identified in several third party reports

• ‘Intellectual property and investment in Artificial Intelligence’ study published by UK Government in July 2022, states that the UK is good at developing AI solutions but is lacking in investment, and AI company growth beyond the start-up stage often falters51

• According to a Public First report, digital technology could grow the economy by over £413bn by 2030. That is the equivalent of around 19% of the entire UK economy52

• Tech Nation published that UK tech venture capital investment is third in the world, hitting a record high of $15bn in 2020 in the face of challenging conditions53 .

To fully exploit the data revolution, innovation skills and behaviours need to be developed and brought in alongside this investment. This links to our other key asks.

• Data should be accessible to all relevant parties. The costs and benefits from the exploitation of data should be shared between those who create the data, those who own the data, and those who benefit operationally and financially from the data.

• Investment in the skills of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence is vital to allow the useful processing of the Data Lakes that will be generated by the industry.

• Our ask is simple and twofold. Firstly, ringfence investment for innovation rollout across client organisations, including organisational change and upskilling. Secondly, assign a significant proportion of funding to radical innovation.

The biggest difference will be made if we move away from a railway which is fighting over the same small pot of money. Giving opportunities to the private sector to deliver on what they specialise in – for example not having the TOCs own every part of the customer interface journey. TOCs don’t do everything as well as specialist partners could – there should be more room for these partners in contractual arrangements.”

Innovation Navigator

The Railway Industry Association is developing the Innovation Navigator, an online tool giving guidance on the railway environment and advice on how to get innovations accepted and developed. It is available for free online and may prove especially useful to new market entrants50 . Scan the QR code to visit the site.

We need to be targeting the right innovations – and part of this is understanding what is already in place so we don’t keep reinventing the wheel. Train Operating Companies have innovation budgets and do some good work, but they are often reinventing the wheel.”

The private sector drives creation of new techniques and technology. But the public sector is often responsible for the innovation part, which is the actual roll-out. Often the public side doesn’t know what capabilities are out there, it specifies too much, too tightly, getting a solution but not an optimal one. We should be more confident in letting the market decide. We should remove the overly bureaucratic, specification-based approach, and open it up to more disruption. This comes down to governance, and it needs investment.”

Key Ask 5:

Operations and maintenance must embrace the digital future. There is an inevitability that maintenance and operations will change as more and more data – and subsequent asset and state knowledge – becomes available. However, this knowledge should not be treated as an additional extra. To reap the full benefits, digital techniques need to be core business activities. This means building in digital approaches from the ground up and designing assets, operations, and maintenance around them.

• The full exploitation of digital technology and the data generated require industry leading experts in all relevant fields. These experts may not exist in the organisations of infrastructure managers or train operating companies.

Standards: Enabler or blocker?

The increase in data usage to improve the railway will challenge the standards used for infrastructure and rolling stock, and this is explored in Key Ask 5, however, there is a significant challenge created managing the standards used for the creation and transfer of data and the development of Digital Twins. This is an important step as, according to the National AI Strategy, 80% of the time spent on an AI project is cleaning, standardising and making the data fit for purpose.

The British Standards Institution (BSI) in conjunction with the National Digital Twin Programme and the Construction Innovation Hub have published a white paper, BSI Agile Standards54 , which addresses 5 important questions:

What is driving the need for increased agility in shaping good practice?

What are the potential benefits of developing standards using agile approaches?

• What are agile standards (that is, what do we mean by standards that are developed in an agile manner)?

How does this compare with traditional approaches?

What are the main applications for agile standards?

2 key things that need to change are our culture and governance. We should fix culture across industry on a way of working and a common goal to work towards to be less confrontational. It’s the governments job to make sure that the strategy aligns with the big picture with an agreed set of working and principles, alongside private sector. Governance: how do we come together as an industry to drive better decision making.”

Artificial Intelligence will be the most impactful thing to happen to the data and digital space in the next few years. Customer facing applications are easy to implement compared to changing safety critical aspects. There is no room for failure in changing those.”

The railway isn’t geared up to use digital twins. The concept is hard to define, and I know of only one or two solid implementations of the technology. Rather than having to go to a full digital twin, the industry should look at what they can do with existing technology to make information accessible – a twin would be good, but it isn’t essential.”

The industry should look to other, nontransport industries to adopt best practise. Defence, road and aviation all have their own challenges but seem to be able to adopt digital practice much faster than rail. What are we doing differently?”

Digital Twins

Digital twins are now part of the deliverables of many live and planned projects. They require a common information architecture, enabling integration of systems, as well as an effective and secure exchange of data. We know that our railways are not always geared-up to provide this. However:

• Do we, as an industry, fully understand the implications, costs, and benefits of digital twins for rail?

• What proportion of railway assets and operations should be replicated on a digital twin platform?

• What capital and ongoing support is needed to enable their creation and adoption in rail?

The answers to these questions, and more, are key to understanding the future role of digital twins.

For example, Network Rail, working alongside RIA members, are making big strides on their digital model of the infrastructure with a single version of the truth for the location of assets in the ‘Axiom’ project. This project is aligned to the business case for digital signalling, but its use cases extend to many other asset types.

• The accumulation of data, the processing of data, and the use of that data will not necessarily be done by the same organisation.

New and innovative methods of data collection need to be implemented into the railway and then trust that information to make operational decisions.

• A significant proportion of high frequency low complexity maintenance tasks cannot feasibly be made condition based by on-asset technology. Additional rolling stock mounted, lineside and depotbased sensors would allow further collection and capitalisation of data.

Maintenance, repair, and service scheduling currently involves long term planning using a significant labour resource. Advances in AI will challenge existing workforce levels and allow almost immediate recalculation of plans.

To maximise automation of high frequency, repetitive tasks equipment should be designed for this, and a whole-life cost considered.

The fastest way to do things is always once! Assets should be surveyed once and the data available to all. At the moment, every discipline carries out its own surveys and holds its own data.”

• The minimisation of whole-life costs does not necessarily financially or organisationally benefit all entities, but it does benefit the cost effectiveness of the railway as a system, ensuring its future competitiveness.

• Systems need to be created with internal – as well as external – customers in mind.

We have information about how the assets perform, but we need to get better at using it, and that’s an organisational issue. We need to move away from the traditional means of doing asset management. If we understood more about system performance, rates of change of system condition and root causes, we may be able to design better interventions. They could be less intrusive, less disruptive interventions.”

We need to reduce cost and provide better value for money. Reducing cost can encourage modal shift onto our greener form of transport, growing our business in a virtuous circle. But reducing those costs relies on organisations changing to embrace new ways of working. Maintenance standards often lag by several decades over what can be achieved.”

How do we move from time interval maintenance to condition based – which is all about use and interpretation of data?”

Key Ask 6:

Collaboration and openness are vital, and this starts with the clients.

Collaboration is a process. The East Coast Digital Programme is demonstrating what can be achieved through close supply chain collaboration with an open and agile client. This could be used as a model for other digital rollouts, with clients encouraged to be open in sharing their opportunities, challenges and needs. The sharing of robust datasets through appropriate channels should be built into procurement and service contracts to ensure compliance across supply chain.

• Targets, challenges, and measures of current performance must be clear and available to allow an understanding of areas where innovation can bring benefits. This must include sharing what data could be available should it be required, even if the mechanism to share it is not yet able.

• With Network Rail devolution, creation of further regional transport bodies, multiple train and freight operators, there is a risk of creating significant duplication in research, development, and innovation activities. A collaborative, cross-industry knowledge bank of ongoing projects, short- and long-term plans, inviting collaboration on innovative projects, would lower costs and enable better adoption.

• Universities are not the only entities with innovation capabilities based on science. Suppliers often work across multiple industries and have been investing in their own solutions for many years – their experience is incredibly valuable but often overlooked in project specification.

We need more collaboration across our self-imposed boundaries. This is of course something that GBR need to wrestle with longer term, but we cannot sit waiting and hoping.”

Realtime Trains platform is a good example of what can be done with an open data stream.”

The Rail Data Marketplace

The Rail Data Marketplace (RDM) is a big step towards the trading of railway data and streamlining, licencing agreements and adopting an ‘open by default’ stance (see case study). It is currently in testing with a small group of users –who have given very positive feedback – and will be released to the wider rail community shortly.

Its objective is to create a market for sharing of data between consumers, such as app developers, tech firms, academia, and the clients. The RDM is reliant on data owners and collectors submitting their data to the marketplace, and having the commitment to support those data feeds to make them robust enough for third parties to derive value. The platform also offers standardised licensing arrangements, which should help third parties, including agile developers, get access to the data they need faster.

There is a responsibility on supply chain to commit to supporting data owners, and in offering an assurance that there isn’t a loss of control of any data.

Banking recently went through a similar process to create the open banking architecture, though in that case the project was funded by a ‘tax’ on banks, given to a central trusted entity to create and host the solution.

• However, these same suppliers often hit barrier when trying to operate in rail. Those barriers include a lack of funding in client organisations to bring about the organisational change needed to yield the full benefits (See key ask 4).

Often the worst things for the supply chain are uncertainty and hiatus, but that’s all we seem to have seen in recent years, not just in the data space. Constant changes in clients, often imposed by Government policymakers, means that supply chain is running around picking up the pieces and this adds huge costs and delays.”

With a devolved operating structure, everyone is seeking separate solutions for common problems. Frameworks incentivise dialogue only with suppliers regionally, meaning multiple similar products are bought nationally. Collaboration should start across these boundaries before it ever gets to the supply chain.”

Bringing a true entrepreneurial spirit, being willing to fail and disrupt, to do things a different way, is vital. Clients need to understand this approach and be open to failures on the development path.”

• Additional barriers are seen across procurement: often trials are procured and SME’s gear up to supply, but then after a successful trial, there is no order forthcoming. Procurement is not set up to support the fail-fast, agile approaches present in many digitally-focussed organisations. A review of digital systems procurement methodology – to include innovation partnerships – may therefore prove valuable.

• RIA welcome challenge statements from Network Rail, Transport for London and wide array of other railway clients. However, those statements need to be supported by teams or individuals who are empowered to make changes and have budgets associated for rollout of successfully demonstrated innovations, alongside an indication of the ‘size of the prize’. Challenge statements without these supporting elements are a real problem for private sector, who often invest based upon them.

The private sector is primed to co-invest, but investment needs a route to a commercial return and this is not always made clear or available. If clients were empowered to share the benefits of investment to solve their issues, significant further investment could be forthcoming.

Knowing what exists?

Data stream availabilities must be published so that innovators know what exists, where to look, and who to contact for future access – even if the data itself will not be available for some time. A corollary of this is that gaps in the data created can be derived, opening opportunities for these to be provided by innovation. Access to the data in the data streams should be available, with free access or through standard contractual shared benefit agreements.

As an example, independent ticketing retailers currently cannot offer long term railway planning (i.e. over a month in advance) because RDG systems do not support this. However, if these companies were given access to the underlying data sets, they could derive it themselves.

It’s a real struggle to get any data at all from Rolling stock leasing companies or train operators – even just something simple like wheel profiles. What is the reluctance to share this data, commercial, political, or other?”

We need to get better at collaborating cross-industry –infrastructure managers with supply chain and other railway undertakings who deliver the timetables. To make everything cost less, it will mean that someone needs to invest.”