So on the theme of meeting up, Team RIA colleagues really do look forward to catching up with you in person soon. As a starter, we’re teaming up with the Rail Alliance, RFM and RFG at Rail Live on 17 June to enable suppliers and colleagues around the railway industry to come together informally after almost months apart. There’ll be coffee and nibbles so come and join us in Zone E, GARDEN_01, opposite the RL organisers office between 10am and 2pm. Please contact events@riagb.org.uk for further details. We really look forward to seeing you there!

Taking Member feedback on board

RIA’s November 2020 Member Survey saw the highest satisfaction ratings for RIA since the survey was first conducted. But we’re not resting on our laurels and are working hard to make sure your feedback is acted on. In a special article, Operations Director Gaynor Pates sets out what RIA has been doing with the valued feedback you provide us.

Ahead of the AGM last year, RIA conducted its annual Member So, I wanted to take this Pulse Survey. Conducted by the independent Pulse Business, the opportunity to highlight some survey asks members about their experience of RIA, their key of the anonymised feedback priorities and what we can improve to ensure we’re delivering we’ve received and what the best service possible. Given the tough year the industry has we’ve been doing to improve. experienced, we were really pleased to get such great feedback from members, including:

Thought Leadership for 2021

• In answer to the question “Overall, how happy are you with your RIA Membership?”, the number answering ‘Very happy’ (the highest category of member satisfaction) has increased When asked what the thought leadership priority should be for

from 44% at the start of the “ RIA in 2021, the resounding response was ‘passenger confidence year to 52% now. Also, 84% and the value of rail’. We’ve certainly now say they are either ‘Really been acting on that advice – at the or quite happy’ with their 88% said they believe RIA end of 2020, we published our ’10 membership compared to 75% at the start of the year. is playing a leadership role as Reasons to Continue to Invest in Rail’ document, highlighting why • This new score means that the voice of the UK rail supply the Government should not take its foot off the pedal when it comes • the satisfaction score ‘Really happy’ highest category, has increased from 34% in 2017 to 52% in 2020. And, in another part of the survey 88% said they believe community ” to supporting rail. Throughout our communications, we are bullish about rail’s prospects, highlighting that rail has been through similar economic and health crises in the past and has always bounced back.

RIA is playing a leadership role as the voice of the UK rail We’re also working to place the rail industry at the centre supply community; and 85% feel RIA has been performing of Government’s plans for the economic recovery. This includes really or quite well as the ‘go-to’ body for advising on working with the Department for Transport and Network Rail on government policy. the Rail Project SPEED Conference, where Prime Minister Boris It’s fantastic to have such positive results, and we’d like to Johnson MP gave the opening remarks, highlighting the need for thank all members who answered the survey. But we know that rail post-pandemic. excellent service requires constant appraisal and challenge! We’re also supporting the Campaign for Better Transport’s ‘The Way Forward’ campaign, launched recently. And we have much more planned, including renewing our well-received Oxford Economics research, to show the value rail provided the economy before the Coronavirus pandemic. Look out for further information on this soon! Since the survey, we’ve continued to press for visibility, urging the Government to publish the Rail Network Enhancements Pipeline as soon as possible, including through media activity and our ‘Rail Enhancements Clock’, which highlights the number of days since the RNEP was last updated.

Visibility and consistency of workload

We’ve supported the Construction Playbook and Procurement Green Papers through our consultation work and are continuing to call for consistency in workloads and greater certainty of work for the rail supply chain. We’re continuing to engage both at Ministerial and senior civil servant level with HM Treasury, the Department for Transport and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. We do appreciate that this work takes time to bear fruit, but we do hope members are finding both Government and clients more receptive to the need for visibility of pipelines.

When asked ‘how do you rate RIA's thought leadership on key technical issues such as safety, decarbonisation and signalling?’ many RIA members said a key issue for the rail supply industry was decarbonisation, and that they’d like to see RIA doing more.

Since the start of the year, we’ve increased our work on the decarbonisation agenda, launching our RailDecarb21 campaign, which is calling on the Government to begin a rolling programme of electrification and support low carbon, self-powered rolling stock ahead of COP26. As part of the campaign, we’ve published our ‘Why Rail Electrification?’ report and secured the signatures of over 17 industry bodies in a letter to Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, calling for further electrification work.

RIA is also working with industry partners, like RDG, RSSB and Network Rail, to ensure rail has a presence at COP26 and are supporting industry initiatives like RSSB’s Sustainable Rail Executive. Decarbonisation will be a key theme at our upcoming Unlocking Innovation event in October.

We also asked ‘how do you rate RIA's thought leadership on key policy issues such as pipeline, supply chain capability and major projects?’. The general response was that RIA had delivered some good work in this area, but needed to keep pressing Network Rail and Government for visibility and certainty.

We were pleased to see that members had found our updates in the run up to Brexit useful, and hope that they continued to be as a trade deal was announced with the EU (which took place after the survey results came in). Some members highlighted the need to do more in increasing rail exports, including raising UK rail up the agenda with the Department for International Trade.

We’ve been working hard to raise the profile of rail to Government, and have had some positive progress – our Chairman David Tonkin now sits on the DIT’s Expert Trade Advisory Group for Transport Services, we’ve been supporting the RSG Exports Pillar, including through the publication of the Exports Survey last year. And we are regularly hosting our highly popular outreach webinars, exploring overseas rail markets across the world. We’ve also organised two virtual trade missions, to Australia and Canada, both of which were very successful.

On Brexit, we are continuing to work closely with DfT and partners like UK Transport in Europe and Rail Delivery Group to ensure we continue to support members. We’ve fed into the Government’s Subsidy Control Consultation and since January have hosted a number of workshops looking at the implications of the trade agreement with the EU. Of course, the more we hear from members, the more tailored and useful our activity can be, so please do keep your feedback coming in.

A few members highlighted how they were missing the networking opportunities RIA would usually provide. We couldn’t agree more – continuing to support members whilst not being able to meet in person has been one of the biggest challenges many trade bodies have faced this year. And whilst we know nothing will replace meeting face-to-face, we do hope that the online networking opportunities we have provided have compensated in some way for the lack of physical events. We now have networking opportunities at the end of most of our special and technical interest groups and are using new technologies like DigiLounge at our upcoming Innovation Conference to bring RIA members together.

As restrictions ease, we do hope we can soon begin face-toface and hybrid meetings once again. In the meantime, please do join in with the range of networking activities we have planned – the more you put in, the more you get out.

Thanks again to all members who responded to the Pulse survey and gave their feedback. Of course, we don’t only seek your feedback once a year – the RIA Team are always keen to find out what we’re doing well, what we could be doing better and how we can provide the best service possible to members.

So if you do have feedback, whatever the topic or issue, please do get in touch – you can email me at Gaynor.Pates@

riagb.org.uk

Decarbonisation

Exports and Brexit

RIA Members catching up at the RIA Innovation Conference in 2019 - we hope to hold physical events as restrictions ease

Events and Networking

Your Feedback

Welcome to New Members

Interested in Membership?

Find out about the benefits of becoming a RIA Member by contacting Membership Engagement Manager Rose Garber at: rose.garber@riagb.org.uk

All RIA members can be found at www.riagb.org.uk

© 2021 Railway Industry Association

Produced by: Railway Industry Association Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions on this Update. Please circulate to your colleagues.