My Presidential year will soon draw to a close and it has been a unique year of great turbulence in the UK, and this has been reflected in many changes in our railway industry.

In January I discussed the challenges of Covid and how we rallied to face and overcome them. I also commented that we need to adjust to this new paradigm, facing the reality that revenue is down and so creating the need for us to consider how we can become leaner and efficient doing the same, and potentially more, with less revenue.

In April I reflected on our need to reconsider our approach to the safety of our workforce as shown through our industry’s recent tragedies where our colleagues, and members of the public, lost their lives. These being at Carmont, Eastleigh, Margham and Surbiton. Whilst the exact root causes of these incidents are being and have formally been investigated, I believe it is fair to say that the themes of the management of asset risk, competence, capacity and capability of our people as well as the processes and system they work within feature as elements in the incidents.

In September 2020 I discussed my chosen Presidential theme, that of industry competency and the case to drive forward with a changed approach. This approach provides many benefits such as clearer career paths, educational opportunities, and also, critically an opportunity to help us identify the areas where we need to strengthen the capability of our community to deal with the changes in our railway environment. This initiative has progressed pleasingly with widespread industry support.

In May the Government released the Williams-Shapps Plan for Rail; ‘Great British Railways’ announcing a major shake-up in the structure of our industry, in many ways bringing the UK Railway back to its roots. This change being intended to simplify industry structure, make decision making more passenger focussed and swifter, and to address a sprawling industry which had evolved layers of complexity since privatisation. It also highlighted the critical points that we must maintain and improve our railway’s reliability, safety and security. Also, that the government intends to grow and invest in our railway and to do so efficiently. Whilst the 113-page document sets out the vision, high-level operating model and initial steps, it is clear that the detail needs to be developed over the coming months. Therefore, we as an industry have the opportunity to support, advise and shape the direction of the new model and take advantage of and harness the opportunities this will bring.

I believe the biggest opportunity and area of importance to us is that of driving and embracing innovation for the ‘new normal’. Specifically, the delivery and implementation of innovation bringing forward new ways of working, new tools, equipment and processes. Ideas that might have been stifled through our current industry operating model might soon have new opportunities to thrive, and through a focus on the whole joined up railway system, we have a new opportunity to tackle the end-to-end system challenges of system performance, system safety, and system cost efficiency.

For instance, we can re-examine and accelerate the industry cases which lever off a single entity operating track and trains such as at TfL. This includes looking again at mounting equipment on trains such as lubrication and friction modification systems or accelerating the systematic installation and use of track geometry monitoring systems.

We’ll also be able to lever off the new operating model to challenge ourselves to work more efficiently, such as accelerating the systematic use all of the data we gather from track and train, using it to help us diagnose problems early and even retire less effective / more expensive systems and ways of working.

We can also challenge ourselves to find simple and effective innovations for cost and efficiency problems such as the example of the invention of robust low conductivity coatings which can be applied to existing structures to reduce required electrical clearances. This particular innovation will remove the need to reconstruct bridges and tunnels where electrical clearance challenges in the past would have made improvements such as the transpennine line electrification upgrade affordable.

I’m confident that through harnessing the skills of our community, through teamwork and collaboration, we can encourage and foster lateral thinking to deliver innovation that will create a more efficient, better performing, and safer railway for our people and the travelling public.

While this year has undoubtedly been very difficult and challenging for us, I see a brighter future ahead, one full of opportunity that we only need to be willing to grasp. It has been a privilege being your President, and I thank you for your support over the last year.