John Clarke
Non-Executive Chair, RSSB
John has over 30 years of experience leading boards and organisations through major transformation.
Welcome to the RSSB Board and to the world of rail.
My entire working life has been in engineering. I started in signals and telecommunication as an apprentice. Since then, I’ve worked across high-altitude geospatial drones, seabed submersibles, advanced digital platforms, cyber data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI). So, quite an array across numerous sectors and geographies.
The focus of my career has been building technology services and delivering large-scale digital transformation. These typically end up touching lots of customers or members of the public as major services, so I’m very aware of the excitement of that—as well as the challenges.
What are your initial priorities as you join our Board, and what are you most looking forward to achieving in this role?
Initially, I want to get to know the Board and executive leadership, and I want to understand the opportunities and challenges that RSSB has and that the industry itself faces.
My priority will be making sure that RSSB leadership has the appropriate support and constructive challenge to help it continue to do the great work it does today. But it’s also to make sure that I’ve got a sense, and they’ve got a sense, of how we need to evolve within this changing industrial context and environment. I want to help make sure that we have a future-fit RSSB that’s delivering on its full value potential.
Do you see any parallels between the digital transformation you’ve led in other sectors and opportunities for building a robust and reliable future for rail?
I’ve worked across several sectors, and I’m always pleasantly surprised by the high degree of cross-sector sharing and learning and collaboration—the move towards more predictive analytics and digital twinning on jet engines or mining test equipment, for example. I think it has a role to play in rail safety and systems themselves.
The rail sector is a very complex ecosystem, and how others have managed that complexity could provide very useful insight to how we ourselves do that. Other industries are taking this system-wide thinking. What can we learn, emulate, or leverage from them?
What role should innovation play in improving the reliability and resilience of the UK rail network?
Innovation—particularly disruptive innovation—is critical to any industry. It’s the need to continually rethink and repurpose what we do and how we do it to generate further value. One thing that excites me about RSSB is the role it plays in resilience innovation across the network.
We’re going to see innovation through enhancing predictive maintenance and asset management. For example, the drive towards creating more digital twins will allow us to monitor assets in real time and provide predictive analysis and avoid potential failures. The use of AI machine learning to analyse far more sensor data from trains will help us predict equipment failures and identify patterns of wear and tear. Also, there are opportunities to optimise energy consumption and train schedules. Increasing the use of smart sensors will let us track the environment and use that insight to develop better models.
I also think resilience and reliability will come through safety innovation. Certainly, the advanced signal systems we’re introducing are core to preventing collisions. They also allow for real-time monitoring of train positions, enhancing our use of automated inspections. We’ll soon see the increased use of drones and robotic systems and train-borne sensors to conduct some inspections of those hard-to-reach or dangerous areas.
Clearly, we live in a world where cybersecurity is central. As our networks become more digitised and interconnected, we must make sure that we have the right cybersecurity measures in place to protect against threats to data integrity and operational control.
Finally, we should all be very aware of climate resilience and sustainability. We’re an industry that utilises energy. So, how do we develop better energy management systems, renewable energy integration, and weather resilience tools?
If rail leaders are ready to have conversations around how we could be more innovative, I welcome that dialogue.
As a Crown Representative, you have a unique perspective on the interface of public and private sectors. What does RSSB’s role as an independent, impartial body mean for our industry?
I think our independence and impartiality are real benefits to the industry. We ensure that the work we do isn’t beholden to commercial interests or the specific agendas of individual railway companies. It allows us to conduct research and analysis and provide truly unbiased, evidence-based insight. RSSB is home to some of the leading experts on technical matters in rail. Their impartial stance ensures that they’re trusted across the industry to collect data and provide a reliable source of knowledge and guidance.
In rail, we need to do more work on facilitating cross-industry collaboration. RSSB provides a neutral ground for doing that. We can bring a diverse range of rail stakeholders to discuss common challenges, share knowledge, and build consensus. I’ve already seen that in practice—we’re coming together to tackle some significant challenges.
What insights will you bring to the RSSB Board that might challenge conventional thinking in the sector?
Being someone who hasn’t come from the industry and is an independent, the best thing I can do is encourage and promote a level of trust and curiosity on the board—provide the right setting to ensure we’re listening, observing, and open to alternative ideas and ways of working. We must try to avoid what we call ‘groupthink’ but also make sure that we examine ourselves for any bias. So, being the independent, perhaps I have the advantage—I can ask the slightly naive questions that may test our foundational beliefs about things. I can ask, ‘Why are we doing that?’ ‘Is there an alternative?’ That’s where I can hopefully bring a slightly different perspective into a team of incredibly clever people around setting standards.