Research and development can help the industry address any problem or opportunity it faces.

The industry’s R&D programme has delivered a wide range of solutions and knowledge to improve the operation and engineering of the railway system, and supporting the people that make it work. The programme has evolved from being solely about safety to a broad portfolio of issues where industry wants to collaborate. The focus is on providing a solution to a problem or opportunity, and increasingly this does not always involve a conventional approach to R&D.

R&D supports industry’s needs in a wide range of areas, from tactical incremental innovations, to long-term step changes in technology. It includes strategic research aimed at helping achieve the industry and government’s long term goals for the railway.

The programme regularly addresses:

• Interface issues: engineering and operational interfaces within the railway, and interfaces with other parts of the community and society
• System issues: improving understanding of how the whole railway behaves and the interactions of its constituent parts
• Strategic issues: to support cross-industry planning and the development of the future vision and technical strategy of the railways and assess how that can and should be delivered
• Many other issues that individual companies cannot address on their own, eg identifying good practice

The programme covers many topics of interest to the railway

Complete and ongoing projects are listed in our research catalogue.  For a particular project go to Find a research project.

Types of research

The term ‘research and development’ for this programme is regarded as including the following:

• Developing models and other decision support tools
• Improving understanding of, and developing the means of controlling, all types of business risk
• Investigating the performance of railway systems, technologies, and people, and identifying the means of improving that performance
• Carrying out concept and feasibility studies for new or improved technologies, and developing new tools and processes to the point where they can be taken up by other parties on a commercial basis
• Identifying good practice, and developing the means of promulgating it
• Developing improved mechanisms for the management and communication of knowledge
• Developing improved mechanisms for communicating and engaging with the industry’s stakeholders
• Carrying out horizon scanning, foresight, and scenario planning studies

Research that supports the technical strategy can be characterised as:

• Concentrating on defined but broad-ranging subjects where it is possible to identify a need for improvement, but not necessarily the specific solutions
• Addressing complex, multi-facetted problems
• Likely to require innovative approaches
• Areas where implementation may be many years ahead
• Likely to involve complex modelling and/or proof of concept
• Typically requiring strong industry collaboration