Stage 2: Propose Archives

A steering group is key to moving forward across the different stages of a Station Innovation Zone (SIZ). They will be championing the work and achieve buy-in across different stakeholder groups. 

The SIZ brings together each of the key strands for running a station – TOC, operations, maintenance, strategic planning, policy specialists – to guide SME through trials and access to wider teams within rail to help refine their ideas.

Formalising the steering group is essential to ensure there is appropriate time and resources made available to each of the steering group members.

For each role – as described below – select one or two individuals.  

When identifying each member, understand:
Why each member needs to be involved
What expertise they bring into the steering group to help achieve the tasks
What each member requires from the steering group to achieve their tasks set
Have a clear understanding of commitment required from each member in terms of time and resources to progress the different phases of the SIZ.
How each member is funded/resourced to spend time on the SIZ.

A central responsibility for each of the steering group members is to achieve agreement within their respective (parts of the) organisation(s) to contribute to discussions that will be ongoing throughout to reach collaborative decisions.

Steering group roles:

Programme manager

Programme sponsor

Communications manager

Testbed manager

Station manager

TOC manager

BTM Learning

The SIZ BTM team did not set up a steering group from the start. This meant that an internal network within the innovator approval still had to be established, which led to a slowing down the process towards the end of Year 1 in our programme. We since have also established partnerships with NR’s R&D team, fire, fire asset and security representatives which will be part of the wider network of the steering group.
The amount of time from people outside of the steering group was underestimated. We had to develop clear communication channels and a lot of work was required to secure necessary resource and time. Influence over different disciplines within the station would help the impact the trials can have on the passenger experience at the station.
Be open to adding to and changing those in the steering group as the programme grows and the requirements are better understood. In year 3, we clarified the distinction between the roles of testbed, station and TOC managers and how these roles are essential to the steering group.
Ensure steering group members get sufficient time and resources allocated to go through stage 1 of a Station Innovation Zone, as stage 1 happens before a formal contract is agreed upon. (This happens in stage 2.)
Identify someone (e.g. from the station or regional teams or even external if this is contractually possible) to act as a champion for each of the challenge areas. Ideally this person has a vested interest in the challenge area and can support the trial and communicate the value of the solution trialled to a wider audience.
We established the role of a dedicated testbed manager, who has in-depth knowledge of the station and its operations. Their fulltime role is to get access to people, expertise and data, and has been vital in organising the trials. The wider network outside of the steering group has supported us in overcome the barrier of time and commitment.
By the end of year 3, we are still dealing with several challenges that may limit the steering group’s performance. There is limited control over the stakeholder input or contractor works, as there is no budget to pay for their time. We quite often have to seek work free of charge.
The dedicated role as testbed manager can be more involved with decision making, planning, along with advising and influencing. This was a change from year 1, when the testbed manager role was supportive and only advisory.
In year 4 of the programme, we would hope to further develop the testbed manager role prioritising:
Getting contractual agreements with all stakeholders. This would enable an easier process for agreeing various aspects and reduce timeframes currently in place (to ensure trial installs, participation in trials, more timely responses, having the ability to pay for other people’s time (cost centres))
Consider having a mature regional working group/surgery/forum that can sit regularly and help steer direction of trials, measuring impact and troubleshooting challenges – rather than individually and ad hoc
Having regional innovation approach that spans all disciplines under a wider efficiency/value directorate – this way we can get a better understanding of how innovation can unlock benefits for passenger experience, asset management, maintenance, and operational efficiency etc – rather than current siloed approach

It is essential to once you understand the scale you are aiming for, how this relates to the available funding. Gaining a good understanding of funding structures is helpful when wanting to identify where budget may be available.

Conduct a thorough budgeting exercise to understand how ambitions align with costs. Some things to consider are:

Who needs to be involved and when, what are their costs (e.g., steering group, Steering Group and Advisory Group)?
Where is required expertise missing, what is the cost of bringing this in?
How much funding do you aim to have available for the trials? How much of this is funding the technical installation? How much should be considered for support around the trials?
Conducting trials is a time-intensive process. When involving stakeholders, especially those operating within the station, consider how they may see benefit from engaging in the trial? Spending time getting involved means that these stakeholders are spending money, which may lead to them questioning the benefit of participation. Relationships are key, and may gain you some goodwill, but it is also worth taking into consideration how trial involvement can make arranged from a financial perspective.

For example, as a breakdown of the first year of the SIZ, the spending allocation was approximately:

40% OPEX on activities directly linked to SIZ (e.g. challenge workshops, SME selection etc)
30% OPEX on technical experts (e.g. refining trials, resolving issues)
25% grant money to the 3 SMEs to develop and run their trials
5% CAPEX to facilitate trials (installing power supply, materials etc)

This provides an idea of the funding needed to enable innovation and helps make a judgement of where to direct funding or reallocate budget to.

Understand the current contextual position of the station to understand where funding opportunities may arise. See the table below for suggestions of aspects to evaluate when reviewing the contextual position of the station.

Ownership	Wider area innovation	Influence
Identifiable decision makers	Part of a wider place development change programme	Location planning modifications that can be built upon
Desire for innovation / change at the place?	Addressing levelling up agenda (both in terms of geography and specific area of city)	Does the steering group have strong existing / emerging stakeholder in this place?
Which TOCs are utilising the station	Added impact: part of relevant innovation zones that can be aligned with (e.g. future mobility zone).	Stakeholders willing to bring in additional funding / match / aligned research

BTM Learning

At the start of this playbook, we discussed the SIZ vision and its importance to achieve NR and wider stakeholder buy-in. This section focusses on the topic of the innovation challenge and station vision. What problem do you want innovations to solve? What is the question that you want answering through new solutions? What kind of station will you have created when these problems are solved and challenges addressed?

Setting an innovation challenge

A good innovation challenge balances the local context of the station and need of costumers with the organisational priorities and strategies of the station and NR more widely. It takes a step towards achieving the station vision as it aims to tackle issues that are currently standing in the way of realising that vision.

Identifying a challenge of which the impact can be measured as part of existing evaluation formats will ensure that the trialled solutions can be reviewed in relation to regional objectives. These formats may not be sufficient to capture all the impact of the trials but should make communication easier with those stakeholders. For example, stations review passenger experience of the station with a so-called ‘score card’. Trials that respond to specific questions in the score card review can help improve station scores.

A challenge can be identified through combining bottom-up and top-up approaches. Often a combination of both is used to ensure the most appropriate challenges are identified.

Bottom-up

A bottom-up approach can start with the problems and challenges that exist now at the station, for example those related to customer experience. These could be elicited by speaking with the teams that are tasked with operating or maintaining the station daily (such as gateline staff, facilities management, operations managers, maintenance engineers), or canvassing passengers to understand where the focus of innovation should be to tackle problems and build momentum.

The station likely operates a periodic scorecard across numerous metrics that can be consulted to understand current barriers to performance, whilst yearly passenger surveys will give indication of trends and long-standing issues.

Whilst aligning with national rail focused strategies, challenges also need to allow the local identity of a station to be maintained as it innovates.

Top-down

A top-down approach focuses on the implications of wider strategy on the stations. Understanding how the aims of the organisation or industry influence decisions made about the station will allow to link up concrete innovation challenges with system-wide objectives. It is likely that higher level challenges keep larger stakeholders engaged, though concrete, small scope challenges, may address an issue that are common across several stations. It is therefore important to understand what the right scope for challenge is.

Programme manager

Programme sponsor

Communications manager

Testbed manager

Station manager

TOC manager

BTM Learning

BTM Learning

Setting an innovation challenge

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