As mentioned in a previous blog, last month (March) saw AARC make its first appearance at a major event in Wales, with both myself and colleague/Training Specialist Greg Edwards attending the Railway Industry Association’s Innovation Conference at the ICC Wales in Newport. With over 450 attendees and 60 exhibitors (including ourselves), the conference provided a platform for industry leaders, engineers, entrepreneurs and other railway professionals to shine a spotlight on the importance of innovation, highlighting technological and research advancements from the UK and further afield.
By way of a summary of the two-day event, day one saw RIA Chief Executive Darren Caplan welcome delegates, raising the importance of innovation in helping to deliver efficiencies, whilst addressing challenges including weather resilience, decarbonisation, improved workforce safety and the provision of better services. This was followed by a pre-recorded presentation from Network Rail Route Director Nick Millington, who emphasised the importance of collaborative engagement, whilst NR’s Chief Technology Officer Robert Ampomah outlined the company’s four key priorities going into Control Period 7 – boots off ballast, weather resilience, better asset knowledge and driving efficiencies through RD&I. From a personal perspective, and in view of the work we’re doing for Amey Infrastructure Wales, it was particularly interesting to hear from Transport for Wales’ Chair Scott Waddington, who outlined TfW’s vision to create a high-quality, safe, integrated, affordable and accessible transport network, with innovation and collaboration ‘absolutely essential in achieving that.’
Day two saw RIA Innovation Director Milda Manomaityte launch the latest RIA thought leadership report, ‘Destination: Revenue Growth,’ which analyses the gaps between the Government’s aspirations, policy and implementation on fares and ticketing. This was followed by Alexandra Luck from the Department for Business and Trade, who introduced the National Digital Twin Programme, which aims to develop the standards, frameworks and guidelines for a functioning market in digital twin technology for the UK. Dr Joanna White, Roads Development Director for National Highways, outlined their innovation programme, whilst Murven Wan, Mechanical Design Engineer for Transmission Dynamics presented the range of products they have developed to monitor and report on asset state in real-time. Also presenting were Dr Steven Carden, PA Consulting Transport Innovation Lead and Tom Salter, Deputy Director – National Security Science and Research at the Department for Transport (DfT), who gave an overview of the ongoing work by the DfT on transport security and resilience. Closing remarks were left to Sven Strassburg, Principal Solution Architect, IBM Technology, who talked about ‘the new paradigm of AI’ and how generative AI can open up new possibilities.
For AARC, the conference was the ideal opportunity to talk about our work with Amey Infrastructure Wales – particularly relevant as it’s where we have been developing our training models, with an initial focus on signaller and electrical control room training, signaller conversion training and depot operations, as well as providing support for AIW’s operations project interface and safety & risk management work. But how does this tie-in with innovation? The answer to that lies in the way that we have approached the training. Rather than the traditional reliance on existing packages, for our work with AIW we have adopted a bottom-up approach, carefully considering all of their procedures before developing, designing and delivering bespoke training packages in a collaborative way.
Back to innovation itself though and one of its core themes – the adoption of new technology to do things more efficiently and effectively. However, at the risk of sounding controversial, there appears to be less focus on going back to basics to actually challenge the way things are done to begin with. If you keep asking for the same thing, you’ll get the same result, albeit a variation on a theme. The issue we need to consider is are we asking the right questions to begin with. In respect of our work with AIW, that’s precisely what we’ve done with our training programmes, taking everything back to basics and asking the question ‘what is it that you actually need to achieve,’ resulting in training packages bespoke to the client, which meet their specific requirements.
To bring this latest blog to a close, was the Innovation Conference actually worth the time and effort. In short, absolutely. As well as providing an excellent opportunity for networking and experiencing new ideas, it’s always interesting to see what’s on the horizon so that we can be ready when it arrives…
