“We’re talking about two to three decades of sustained, huge investment – unparalleled in the last century of the industry’s history.”
in developing new technology. It’s also about adapting technology that’s already being used in other sectors and applying it to these railways. I’d argue there are probably bigger near-term opportunities to do that than in developing unique-to-rail technologies. Much of this is happening; the digitisation of many of our work processes is rapidly being adopted by the industry, which is having tremendous early success and impact on the way people work and the effectiveness they operate with.
Need for more R&D spending
The one thing I would say to you, coming from the automotive sector into the rail industry, which by the way has been an absolutely fascinating and enjoyable journey – I’m not on a vertical learning curve any more, but it’s still quite steep! – the thing I noticed early on is that although there’s a tremendous amount of innovation going on, we only spend less than 1% of revenue on R&D in this industry. The benchmark level for an average manufacturing industry is more like 2.8% or 2.9%. I would argue that for a technically complex, technologically intensive industry with as much opportunity to exploit R&D as we have in the UK, I reckon it should be higher than average.
We’ve started to campaign for an increase in the allocation of resources for R&D, and actually in the CP5 settlement, we did manage to achieve a £50m increase – a doubling of the R&D investment that Network Rail’s making. This is not just for Network Rail, this is for the industry, for accelerating and developing R&D projects amongst collaborative partners, to make a difference to the effectiveness and effi ciency of our outputs.
I don’t know exactly why this lack of investment in R&D has been a feature of this industry in the past. It might be that there isn’t enough competitive pressure to innovate. It might be that some of the people making the decisions about R&D – I won’t name where they might be – don’t understand suffi ciently its potential.
26 | rail technology magazine Feb/Mar 14
I’d argue that’s probably partly our fault for not explaining it clearly enough, but we’re starting to make a difference with those arguments.
Probably also perhaps, the industry bears the scars of some of the failures to introduce new technology. I’d argue that failures in introduction are not a reason for us to fear innovation and technology – they’re a reason for us to perfect the technology implementation process. Of course, we work in a very complex environment, so effective executive is diffi cult but essential, no matter how innovative or potentially transformational that new technology might be.
It’s about managing risk better together, and not allowing ourselves to become risk-shy. That collaboration is what will underpin our ability to be more ambitious, which will in turn underpin our ability be more successful. Strengthening collaboration at all levels must also be across disciplines, within Network Rail and between us and the wider industry, whether that’s TOCs, FOCs, or indeed the supply chain and ROSCOs. Collaboration can be driven by the work of the Rail Delivery Group and I am very excited by the new BIS/DfT sponsored Rail Supply Group that’s getting kicked off. We’re committed to making those collaborative initiatives work, and we’ll support them.
Helping local suppliers win contracts
It’s also very important that the UK gets a good share of the value chain that’s being created by this huge expenditure. Obviously we don’t want to compromise the competitiveness and cost-effectiveness of what we do by favouring local suppliers, but goodness, we should help those local suppliers to be in the best position possible to win those contracts and deliver world-class competitiveness for the good of the whole railway system. So I’m excited by and optimistic about the ability of the UK rail sector as a whole to benefi t from all this investment that’s going on in our industry, rather than us buying in everything from abroad.
We must also not be blind to the fact that no company and no country nowadays is self- suffi cient in technology know-how, so we must be open to importing and partnering with the best in the world to make sure what we deliver is the best in the world.
Be ambitious
My message to ambitious young people considering a career in the rail industry would be: join us, we need your ambition.
Being ambitious means taking more risks, but also managing those risks intelligently, so we always protect our end-users. It means going after those innovations that push the frontier dramatically, as well as those that deliver incremental change. Once an idea has been taken forward to the prototype stage, we must develop the capability to model and analytically test it away from the operational railway as much as possible – spotting all the failure modes, and making sure we have simulated the effectiveness of our counter-measures to each of those failure modes.
These challenges ahead will require ambition and dedication – the sort shown by all those who are up for Awards here tonight. We need that ambition for the railway as a whole, and we need that dedication to being willing and able to work differently to achieve the results we need.
Working better together; being ambitious; being as incredibly dedicated as railway people are; harnessing technology and innovation to transform outcomes; the consensus for investment; an industry that matters so much to the very fabric of the nation. This is the story we need to tell to the best graduates – join us. We will help you fulfi l your ambitions, and you can help us fulfi l ours. This used to be seen as an industry in decline. If confi rmation was needed that this is an outmoded point of view, tonight surely provides it.
You can see the speech, and the RTM
video Parry-Jones makes reference to, at
www.railtechnologymagazine.tv
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