Kelvin Davies & Klara Ludinova: Interview

Klara Ludinova is Innovation Lead – Rail at InnovateUK Innovate UK is the UK’s national innovation agency. It supports business-led innovation in all sectors, technologies and UK regions. It helps businesses grow through the development and commercialisation of new products, processes, and services, supported by an outstanding innovation ecosystem that is agile, inclusive, and easy to navigate.

Kelvin Davies, Head of Innovation at The Global Centre of Rail Excellence. The GCRE is a major new rail innovation centre due to open in 2025. GCRE was established in 2021 with an initial commitment of £50 million from the Welsh Government. The UK Government is supporting the project with funding for research and development along with capital funding of £20 million. GCRE recently launched a major public procurement to attract private funding for the project.

Spanning the former Nant Helen opencast site and Onllwyn Washery in South Wales, GCRE will be the UK’s first net zero railway. The facility will include two 25KV electrified test loops, one a 6.9 kilometre high speed rolling stock track and the other a four kilometre, 60 kph infrastructure test track.

Sam Sherwood-Hale spoke to Kelvin Davies, Head of Innovation at GCRE on secondment from InnovateUK and Klara Ludinova, Innovation Lead – Rail at InnovateUK about the First of a Kind (FOAK) competition and the innovation climate in the UK

SSH: Klara, you joined InnovateUK in August last year – how have these first six months been?

Klara: I am a chartered structural engineer and worked for rail contractors as a designer in engineering consultancies prior to my role at Innovate UK. I knew that my role as Innovation Lead will be slightly different and the first six months have been exciting. As Innovation Lead for Rail I manage the First of a Kind programme, which enables me to have a bigger impact as the FOAK winners work towards delivering their innovations to the whole rail network.

SSH: What is the process for the First of a Kind (FOAK) competition like?

Klara: After organisations apply for the competition, their applications go through an assessment process where a number of external assessors with broad industry knowledge will review the applications, ensuring that teams are addressing industry priorities, and that the proposals are highly original and innovative.

The current FOAK competition has three themes, and one of them is lowering carbon emissions which is split into two phases. In phase one applicants will deliver a feasibility study where they will look at their proposed innovation in more details and provide a clear plan for establishing technical and commercial feasibility. To enter into the phase two, the applicants have to fill out a similar application as per phase one, submit their feasibility report and then go through the assessment process again. We currently have seven projects in phase one and up to two projects will continue into the phase 2 when the main focus will be on development of a working prototype, demonstration of the prototype and evaluation activity. Once project has been approved for funding, it is usually monitored on a quarterly basis. These quarterly meetings are led by a monitoring officer who monitors the overall progress of the project and approves financial claims.

SSH: How did the FOAK competition begin?

Kelvin: We’re run FOAK rail innovation competitions since 2017 and it evolved from within itself and from a previous stream of competitions which was called the Accelerating Innovation in Rail. The main evolution was in terms of the deliverables and the requirement for a demonstration. We’re in our sixth year now and each competition has learned from the previous one. The key difference has been developing the demonstration on the live railway network, by which I mean putting something on as close as possible as we can to the operational railway and the testing of that with real customers and the people who actually engage with the railway – rather than doing it in a lab, it’s fundamental to FOAK that we do it all on the railway.

The R&D activities that are developed through other programs (such as through RSSB) may be at a lower maturity level before they come to us with a FOAK project and we put it onto the railway and take it to that next stage. This is a natural pipeline as great ideas progress from concepts, to demonstrators and to products.

Teams do not have to have come through the RSSB program though. Other teams may develop concepts themselves and in all cases what we’re looking for is high maturity technology that just needs that extra push to get it in a position where it can be commercialised and put on to the railways.

SSH: What were the themes for this year’s competition?

Klara: This year the themes are rail freight, lower emissions and a greener railway and cost efficiency and performance priorities for a reliable railway. We had over 90 applications. All applications are very different from each other. The challenges on railway are complex – and even though two organisations may be addressing a similar problem, their solutions vary, for example this year we have two projects bringing two very unique approaches to the maintenance of the overhead wires.

Kelvin: What we do is we fund proactive teams who will already have their own plans and their own ambitions and it is up to those teams how they deliver their demonstrations to their best commercial advantage and the railway industry's best commercial advantage. In the FOAK2022 competition we’re at the stage now where teams are developing their technologies and planning their demonstrations to be delivered later in 2023. Critical at this stage is a letter of support from a railway industry company that all teams must possess before applying into the competition, confirming that the innovation is a high priority for them and for the railway industry. It is always interesting to see how teams plan their final demonstrations. This is timed to their best tactical advantage and located in a setting where the innovation can be best demonstrated. Depending on the innovation, some choose to demonstrate on board services, in main-line stations, in freight yards, depots or by the lineside.

We always fund teams that are engaged and have a strong commercial appetite, we are not always there to support teams and we want to engage the right teams who are able to drive the projects themselves. There are 24 live projects right now and all of those projects are only three to six months into their development, some of them will run for up to 2 years. In the past there have been great demonstrations including at Euston station, on live services with Transport for Wales and GWR, at Transport for Scotland and Govia Thameslink. We've seen live demonstrations on the network with real customers, often with apps to provide an enhanced customer service, or on-board entertainment – one example is this team that provided an onboard historical commentary of sights seen during the journey. And of course we see demonstrations with locomotives and units in the depot or occasionally on the rail network. It is a requirement that helps to de-risk future uptake of the innovation that demonstrations are not in a laboratory or a meeting room – they must all be on the real railway.

In relation to the contracts we require teams to sign, each mandates that they have to demonstrate on the real railway. If you know space history, in 1968 when the Americans got to the second crewed Apollo flight, it was originally planned to remain in earth orbit but late in the day NASA decided that they were ready to travel to the moon and that’s what they did. This led to the successful moon landing in 1969 and meeting the President’s objective of achieving moon landing in the 1960s. In a similar vein, we're are keen to push teams that little bit further because we know that they will learn a great deal more and it also helps to remove one of the blockers to innovation on the railway network which is getting that approval and permissions and maximising customer engagement.

SSH: How do we create an innovation ecosystem in the UK?

Kelvin: We only want to fund teams that have that appetite to make things happen on the real railway. Once we’ve identified those teams, we push them onto the live rail environment which generates a reciprocal relationship with the rail industry which is expecting teams to arrive with innovations. We work closely with RSSB, the Innovation Leadership Group and the Technology Leadership Group to understand what the blockers are and how we can deliver a small component to overcome those blockers.

SSH: What is the nature of the partnership with the Department of Transport?

Kelvin: We meet regularly with representatives from across the railway industry who engage with innovation, RDG, DfT, RSSB, Network Rail and the industry’s technology and innovation bodies which include the Technology Leadership Group and The Innovation Leadership Group.

Klara: The Department for Transport is the funder of FOAK. For every FOAK round we convene a steering committee group where we bring experts from the industry, with TOCs and ROSCOs along with Network Rail and others. During this workshop we brainstorm what the industry needs and outline the potential FOAK themes which are in line with the Rail Technical Strategy. DfT makes the final decision afterwards.

Kelvin: In defining the focus of a competition, we bring three things to the table. These are an outline of the DfT’s priorities, the Rail Technical Strategy (a paper document outlining the industry’s future technical requirements), and a dedicated steering committee which supports a brainstorming session and a workshop. From these sources we put together a document which prioritises the priority themes for each competition. When DfT have reviewed this, and only after many months of work, are we in a position to outline the priorities for a competition, and to publish this to industry. You’ll notice that decarbonisation has been a theme for a number of years and that's a reflection of the continuing high level of importance placed on this priority by a number of bodies in the railway industry. However, after a number of years focusing on decarbonisation and low-emissions for passenger services the focus has shifted this year to decarbonisation and low emissions for freight operators.

Trying to find that sweet spot between the overlapping interests of different stakeholders is always interesting. What we are seeking are challenges that are of relevance to the maximum number of teams, but we also need to ensure that we don’t deliver the same competition every year. We try to move around the industry as much as we can and to seek different opinions. With most rail operators in the UK focusing on passenger services, it is vitally important that we do not neglect freight, simply because most of the voices in the room are passenger operators. A balanced judgement is important, based on the common interests in the room.

InnovateUK also promotes a number of national level priorities and works closely with government and our parent department which is the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

InnovateUK delivers funding opportunities in a variety of formats, and across an incredibly wide range of topics. The bulk of the activity sees the organisation BEIS to grow the UK economy and to make UK industry even more competitive. The FOAK programme is a managed programme and sees InnovateUK’s capabilities applied in directly supporting the Department for Transport. The program is fully-funded by the Department for Transport and delivers via the SBRI competition format, just one of a number of competition formats and a very appropriate approach given what we are delivering for the railway industry.

SSH: How long after the competition is over and the funding has been awarded do you stay in touch with the projects?

Kelvin: Keeping aware of past projects is a high priority for Innovate UK and we have some new structures in place to support that.

The Impact and Evaluation framework collects data on a regular basis to see how commercially successful each project has been, how the funded organisation has benefitted, and what the impact of the innovation was. Although some innovations proceed to the market immediately, for others the challenge is that it may take time, so when a project is funded, it may not be the case that they then achieve instant multinational success – we have to track them over months and years. The first FOAK finished in 2018 and we have a number of standout successes from that programme that we’re still tracking.

Klara: My main focus is on the current FOAK competition and driving it forward and developing relationships with the current FOAK project teams. Good way to stay in touch with our current as well past winners is through industry events, such as InnoTrans, Rail Live or RailTex.

SSH: What makes this such an exciting time for innovation in the rail sector?

Klara: What excites me is when the project teams focus their innovation on the end users and when teams are proactive in collecting data on how their product will be beneficial to the rail staff or rail customers. As an engineer I attended regular visits to rail sites and could see how difficult and complex some of the rail work can be, such as maintenance of station, bridges, culverts, embankment, and anything which can make the maintenance of railway more efficient and improve the lives of people carrying out the work is exciting for me.

I look forward to live demonstrations of our FOAK projects when the teams will be able to prove their innovations work in the live rail environment.

Kelvin: This is the other benefit of the live demonstration, it exposes the product to the customer and what the customer actually wants and what they will actually buy. One thing we don't track is how many successful relationships develop from unsuccessful applications. We had nearly 100 applications for the last round and we funded 24 projects so we can only fund about one quarter of the projects, even though we’d like to fund many more great innovations.

SSH: Kelvin, you’re currently working as Head of Innovation at the Global Centre of Rail Excellence – how did the collaboration with GCRE and InnovateUK come about?

Kelvin: The team there were keen to draw on the experience we've had delivering the Department for Transport’s programme and what we've been describing actually ties in really well because part of the challenge for any innovative team is in finding a demonstration site that is representative of the railway. It is a complicated process, identifying a suitable site, negotiating access and permissions, and then installing equipment to deliver the demonstration. Network Rail has some excellent facilities, Porterbrook operates the Long Marston test facility, and The Black Country Innovative Manufacturing Organisation has a new test facility focusing primarily on light rail at present. Each brings its own capabilities, but what we lack in the country is a dedicated high-speed, fully integrated modern railway test track for the testing of both rolling stock and infrastructure. That is what makes GCRE different and a valuable step forward. The experience we’ve developed through working with DfT on rail innovation programmes will be invaluable to GCRE because we have the experience of running five years of innovation programmes looking across the whole railway system, so that’s rolling stock, customers, depots, decarbonisation, infrastructure – GCRE will bring new opportunities for testing both rolling stock infrastructure, and that is a real game-changer for the UK.

SSH: How has the experience of working with GCRE been for you?

Kelvin: It’s been a really interesting opportunity to do something with high agility as it all has to happen very quickly, it has a global footprint and it’s making a statement that we really need to focus on the infrastructure side of railway innovation. The statistic that we quote is that ratio between the spend on infrastructure and rolling stock is 10:1 so we’ve spent ten times as much on infrastructure as we do on rolling stock, but we have no way to test new and innovative ways of building infrastructure in the UK. With major programmes like HS2 there is the chance to make substantial cost savings if we can innovate in the way we build railways.

SSH: So that's why this is a very exciting time for this particular type of site, do you feel there's more funding available now than there was in previous years because of these big projects?

Kelvin: It's more true to say that the funding has been maintained over the years. In the innovation and research and development space I feel the funding is at a consistent level. The importance of innovation funding may be growing because of programmes like HS2 and East West Rail which show that it's not just about maintaining and developing the old railway network from the 1800s, it is also about contributing to these exciting modern initiatives to build new railways and to apply 21st century innovations to these critical elements of the UK’s infrastructure.