Innovation Design Contest - Rail Revolution

Network Rail are running a Design Contest to procure Innovative solutions to our business problems. Representatives from our regions and members of wider industry selected 3 key challenge themes 1. Performance, 2. Customer Experience, 3. Asset Management. Based on criteria, the project team and participants then selected a range of challenge statements to take forward to be solved in an Innovation Design Contest. The challenge statements are as follows:

Station car parking - NR is looking to provide rail passengers with more information about car parking space availability at their chosen station in advance of their journey. The aim of the information is to enable effective decision making about using the car park as part of their rail journey. This would enable rail passengers to plan an element of their journey that can be unpredictable and stressful.

Station Facilities - NR is looking to bring together information about services and facilities. How might we bring together a number of disparate and unlinked datasets into one place? The data will include a mix of real-time automated datasets and manually updated inputs

Level crossing gates - NR is seeking a reliable means of preventing gates at a User Worked Crossings being left open or detecting when the gate has been left open by a user so that action can be taken to avoid or reduce the impact of a hazardous event.

Passenger Demand and service levels - NR are seeking ways to understand and model passenger demands in order to align planning activities more accurately, i.e. develop robust timetable and plan contingency for disruption. NR would like to produce a multi-disciplinary Digital Twin Model for use in Asset Management creating a 3D graphic virtual model of the infrastructure.

Planning tool for infrastructure works - NR is looking for a planning tool that could provide a robust plan of work that is taking place on the infrastructure which would include GPS enabled possession and worksite boards.

We are unaware if suitable solutions already exist which solve our challenges, likewise we recognise that to realise these ambitions will require collaboration across the industry. Innovation will be essential, and best practice from other sectors should be embraced.

The purpose of this PIN is to:

• Understand if the market can meet the needs set out by the challenges proposed
• To assess the range of solutions that exist which may meet our ambition to tackle our challenges across 3 themes.

Therefore, we have key questions we want to test with the market

1. Which of the challenges can you provide a solution to?
2. Can you provide us the key details of your solution that has the potential to solve the identified challenge statements?
3. What risks do potential participants foresee and how could these be overcome?
4. Does your solution have clear benefits for passengers?
5. Is safety at the heart of your solution?

To obtain this feedback we invite suppliers to provide a short information note (providing considerations to the questions above). For more information on this and to receive the PIN supplemental please email to catherine.burgess@networkrail.co.uk by the 24th September 2021 We want a fast turn around of responses and expect submission of proposals by the 30/9/21.