New partners sign up to academia/industry initiative
THE UK Rail Research and Innovation Network (UKRRIN) has gone “from strength to strength” and has grown by more than a third since its initial launch in April 2018.
That was the message from
Clive Roberts, Professor of Railway Systems at UKRRIN’s lead university partner the Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education (BCRRE), as the UKRRIN partnership between academia and industry sets its sights on the recruitment of more members in 2020.
In an address at UKRRIN’s second annual conference in Birmingham on November 21, Roberts told delegates that during the past 19 months four universities and four industry partners had successfully applied to join UKRRIN’s founding roll call of eight university and 14 industry members.
He said another “six or seven” potential members are in the process of joining the network, demonstrating the strength of support that exists for UKRRIN’s mission to bring the leading players from the rail sector together with academia in order to speed up the development of new products.
“We’ve been doing rather a lot since we launched UKRRIN with the idea to help make a step-change in investment in rail innovation, build UK rail capabilities, improve productivity, and develop new strategic relationships with SMEs [small to medium-sized enterprises],” said Roberts.
“Many of our university partners have strong SME engagement programmes and all of this is going from strength to strength.
“UKRRIN is also changing and is a moving beast. We are constantly identifying gaps to enhance our capabilities. All new members must go through a joining process and meet certain criteria, but anyone is welcome to talk to us about joining the family.
“There is a pipeline of six or seven new industry partners currently in the process of signing up. And that door is very much open, because we’d like to build a large consortium that can take our objectives into the next phase.”
Among the four most recent industry partners to have joined UKRRIN is Porterbrook, with whom BCRRE collaborated to launch the UK’s first standard gauge hydrogenpowered train (HydroFLEX) at Rail Live in June ( RAIL 882).
Roberts pointed to the fact that the successful running of the prototype had occurred just nine months after a partnership agreement had been signed at the InnoTrans international trade fair in Berlin in September 2018.
He added: “I could list 100 projects going on in this space, which is really exciting, but collaborations include HydroFLEX, which was a real landmark in UKRRIN activity and the decarbonisation of the UK.
“Bringing it from concept to reality in just nine months really shows that acceleration, and the hunger in UKRRIN for doing rapid TRL [technology readiness level] progression.”
Roberts also provided an update on the new facilities being developed at UKRRIN’s four Centres of Excellence in Rolling Stock, Digital Systems, Infrastructure and Testing.
With the help of more than £90 million UKRRIN funding (provided by its industry partners and the Higher Education Funding Council for England), a new National Infrastructure Laboratory opened at the University of Southampton in September, while other multimillion-pound research facilities have also opened at the Universities of Huddersfield and Newcastle.
Meanwhile, a ‘topping out’ ceremony was due to take place in late November for a new £16.4m, 3,000m2 facility at BCRRE that is due to open in mid-2020.
Other developments from 2019 include the launch of a UKRRIN lecture series at its Centres of Excellence for Rolling Stock and Digital Systems, while further work has been completed to formalise its relationships with public bodies including Network Rail.
A Research and Development framework has now been agreed between UKRRIN and NR for Control Period 6 (April 2019March 2024) that will result in NR investing £10m on working with the Universities of Birmingham, HeriotWatt, Huddersfield, Loughborough, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Southampton.
Looking ahead to 2020 and beyond, Roberts added: “We’re looking to develop capabilities and enhance facilities even further, and broaden our relationships across industry with other organisations such as Young Rail Professionals and Women in Rail.
“We’d also like to develop new things such as a passenger experience research capability, to improve the passenger experience and comfort levels.
“In 2022, the University of Birmingham is also due to host the World Congress in Railway Research, when we will welcome the world’s rail researchers to work with us. We will show how UKRRIN can collaborate on the world stage and really put our activities on the map.”
■ To find out more about joining UKRRIN visit www.ukrrin.org.uk, contact UKRRIN’s co-ordinating hub (ukrrin@rbbs.org.uk) or follow UKRRIN on Twitter @UKRRIN.
“We’d like to develop new things such as a passenger experience research capability, to improve the passenger experience and comfort levels.” Clive Roberts, Professor of Railway Systems, Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education