Deadline: 28-May-25
The Innovate UK and the Department for Transport (DfT) are collaborating with the rail industry to accelerate and increase the adoption of innovation to improve UK railways.
The FOAK Programme addresses industry challenges by running innovation competitions. The competitions focus on collaboration with industry and deliver high maturity demonstrations, enabling efficient integration into the railway system. This competition aims to support innovative suppliers for market readiness.
Themes
- This competition theme focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for complex processes in rail. They are seeking innovative solutions that leverage AI technology to automate and optimise complex processes, improve decision making, enhance productivity, sustainability and minimise waste.
- High Speed Two (HS2) is one of Europe’s largest rail and infrastructure projects, involving many complex processes. Similarly, Network Rail has a significant renewals and enhancement program, which also presents considerable complexity for teams to manage.
- This process complexity is driven by several factors, including multiple stakeholders, a complex data landscape comprising both structured and unstructured data from disparate sources across the supply chain, and a highly regulated, safety critical environment.
- Several processes in the delivery of large projects and programmes have been identified that could benefit from AI technology, helping to reduce costs, improve efficiency, and minimise passenger disruption.
- These processes may include:
- handover and transitions
- cost verification and assurance
- programme schedule and sequencing optimization
Funding Information
- A total of up to £4.7 million, inclusive of VAT, is allocated to this competition across all four themes.
- Contracts of up to £200,000, inclusive of VAT will be awarded to develop a prototype and undertake field testing between three to seven months and must be completed by 31 March 2026.
- They expect to fund a minimum of two projects per theme and up to 23 projects across all four themes.
Eligibility Criteria
- Your project
- Projects must:
- start by 1 September 2025
- end by 31 March 2026
- last between three to seven months
- have total costs of no more than £200,000, inclusive of VAT
- Projects must always start on the first of the month, even if this is a non-working day. You must not start your project until your Contract has been approved by Innovate UK.
- You must only include eligible project costs in your application. See their overview of eligible project costs. For specific guidance, see the eligibility section in this competition.
- Applicant
- To lead a project, you can:
- be an organisation of any size
- work alone or with the subcontracted skills and expertise of others from businesses, research organisations, research and technology organisations or the third sector (charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)
- Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only. The majority of the project work and key deliverables including the project demonstration and trialling must be completed by the applicant and be carried out in the UK. Subcontractors can be used, but only for specialist skills.
- They expect you to include an integration supporter in your project to help facilitate the demonstration of your technology. The demonstration should be in a suitable railway environment to allow the effective evaluation of the solution.
- Your project could involve, for example:
- an owner of railway assets, for example, stations, rolling stock or infrastructure
- an experienced railway organisation
- a rail organisation that has the potential to become a customer
- They recommend approaching potential integration supporters as early as possible during the application process or early stages of your project. This ensures your industry relationships are well established before delivering the project demonstration. They welcome projects that include an innovative startup supply company that is already delivering in another sector.
- To lead a project, you can:
For more information, visit Innovate UK.