Do you have an innovative product or service ready for market exploitation, but which has not yet been demonstrated in a live UK rail environment? Or are you a railway organisation with a vision to improve the UK rail industry? If so, this First of a Kind (FoaK) competition may be for you.

The scope themes for FoaK 3 are:

• Operational Resilience
• Infrastructure Resilience
• Freight (non-passenger transport)
• Noise / Environment

These projects will provide railway organisations and suppliers with evidence they need to:

• Overcome constraints to the delivery of innovations;
• Create a more collaborative environment with innovative suppliers;
• Collect valuable feedback from the public to accelerate the pull through of innovations;
• Showcase the UK’s potential to deliver significantly improved experiences and rail services for domestic and export markets

Innovate UK is launching this First of a Kind programme on behalf of the DfT (Department for Transport) to accelerate innovation in the UK rail sector and enable technologies to be readily and efficiently integrated into the rail system.

The aim of the competition is to enable innovative solutions to take the final step to market readiness. It will break down barriers to the delivery of innovations into the rail industry by proving that innovations deliver the expected outcomes when integrated in a complex real-world rail environment.

The innovations in this competition must be:

• Market ready - high TRL proven technologies
• Very low technology risk

Applications to this competition must focus on:

• Fair value
• Integrating innovations to improve experience for customers’ activities
• Demonstrate proof of concept to rail customers and end-users.

Businesses can apply for a share of £5.5 million for First of a Kind technology to develop demonstrators to enhance resilience, freight operations and the environment. This competition offers the potential of 100% funding, with projects starting by mid 2019.

The Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN) on behalf of DfT and Innovate UK is running launch events for the competition on 26th and 28th February 2019, in London and Manchester respectively, to showcase the potential rail assets available for demonstrating these innovations. A 3rd briefing event will be held on 7th March in Cardiff kindly sponsored by the Welsh Government.

Don't miss the opportunity, register now to attend the event in person in either London, Wales, Manchester or watch it live online. (Please choose one option only.)

Further details of the competition scope etc are available here.