Digital Railway is disrupting the UK Rail Industry

As I sat down for the start of the latest Digital Rail suppliers conference I can’t help but think back over the year since the first event, what has happened since and what challenges the industry will face in the future.
There is full understanding of the problem facing the UK rail network. Continuing passenger growth demands more trains and better use of the current infrastructure. Doing nothing is not an option, building more is to difficult and expensive and digitalisation clearly presents the easiest option for the industry to meet the projected growth in demand (doubling under some estimates).
But easiest does not mean easy. Whilst the emerging economic case has been set out by the Digital Rail team and is improving as our understanding improves, no-one is under any delusion that realising the benefits that digitalisation promises will be straightforward.
In recent years we have experienced 65% growth in capacity in the Underground through digitalisation of the timetables and the business case produced by the Digital Rail team have shown that within the south west mail line digitalisation could produce 30,000 extra peak time seat at 30% lower capital cost.
There are digital challenges in three key operational areas:
1. Asset information
2. Infrastructure management, and
3. System thinking.
Asset information is moving quickly to become digital. The ORBIS Programme run by Network Rail is enabling this, digitalising the network to provide integrated tools and systems. Digitalisation of infrastructure management is immensely difficult and needs full industry support to enable. Information is there or nearly there but using it to improve infrastructure management requires different operating models and systems. And thinking at a system level is some way off. This is understandable given the scale of the problem and the need to develop and test the strategic and operational case for change.
Digitalisation of the UK rail network is the biggest change the rail industry will face for a generation. Planning and understanding the nature of technology and business change, costs and timescales to deliver the benefits is critical to ensuring the best chance of success.
And that is where the biggest challenge will be faced – business change. My experience is that technology led digitalisation programmes fundamentally under-estimate the scale of the business challenge. A good rule of thumb is to use the 20:80 rule, with 20% of effort required in the technology and 80% in the system and business change. Planning and integrating technology, information and system changes is difficult but with the preparation being done within the Digital Rail team will deliver significant benefits to the UK rail network. Doing it without the full support from the wider industry, operators, workforce and regulators will mean the benefits realised are sub-optimal.
We need to get behind the initiative, support the programme and drive the change.