Contracts for Innovation: FOAK 2025 – AI for Complex Processes

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.

We 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

We 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. We welcome projects that include an innovative startup supply company that is already delivering in another sector.

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

A key project deliverable, that must be included in your milestones, is a demonstration event and trial. You must invite potential customers from the railway industry, along with other industry representatives, to this event. Projects must also include an evaluation activity at the end, measuring data to assess the anticipated impact of the solution on the railway network. Details of these are given below.

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.

Proposals into this competition must already be high maturity at Rail Industry Readiness Level (RIRL) 5 or above. You must show evidence of this as part of your application.

The aim of the competition is to develop innovative solutions which address the following themes:

• Platform Train Interfaces
• personal safety
• bridge strikes
• AI for complex processes

You must select a single theme to apply for. If a project covers multiple themes, choose the one in which the majority of the work will be undertaken.

Your project must:

• show how your solution aligns with one of the competition themes
• demonstrate your solution can be integrated into an operational or construction railway environment as a ‘First of a Kind’
• prove the commercial benefits of your solution to railway stakeholders and customers
• provide a business case for commercial adoption, reducing risks and accelerating uptake of new technologies
• collect customer and performance feedback
• gather evidence about implementation challenges and explain how you will de-risk the implementation
• demonstrate how your solution integrates into larger complex systems and delivers the expected outcomes

Although software for mobile devices (also known as applications) may be in scope, only a limited number of these projects will be supported to ensure a range of solutions are developed.

Contracts will be given to successful applicants.

Demonstration event and trialling

A key project deliverable, that must be included in your milestones, is a demonstration event and trial.

The demonstration and trialling must take place in an environment representative of where the solution will be deployed, allowing for effective evaluation.

You must invite potential customers from the railway industry, along with other industry representatives, to your demonstration event.

You will be expected to include an integration supporter in your project to help facilitate the demonstration and trialling of your solution. In their role as potential future customers, they will be well placed to propose an appropriately representative environment.

The demonstration and trial must take place in a setting where railway customers and industry representatives can witness the solution as a compelling business proposition. It should be as close to a live railway environment as possible. You will be expected to collaborate with your integration supporter to achieve this, securing all necessary permissions and approvals.

Example environments include:

• within a railway station
• in rolling stock
• on railway infrastructure
• in the environment close to the railway

This list is not exhaustive, and other environments may be more appropriate to demonstrate certain types of solutions.

Where necessary, the demonstration event may be held online to reach a wider range of stakeholders. However, in this case, it must be supplemented with evidence from a trial demonstrating the effectiveness of your solution.

You should de-risk all aspects of your project before submitting a bid to this competition, ensuring it can be delivered in line with the requirements of the DfT and Innovate UK.

Evaluation activity

Projects must include an evaluation activity at the end, measuring data to assess the anticipated impact of the solution on the railway network.

This should compare baseline data related to the competition theme and outline the improvement from your solution using data from the demonstration or trial.

This could be a measurement of the time taken to complete a task, or the costs incurred before and after adoption of the technology. Alternatively, the activity might take the form of a survey of railway staff or customers to solicit feedback and to anticipate cost benefit.

In all cases the collection of objective data where possible is preferred over the collection of subjective feedback.

This evaluation activity is a key deliverable and must be included as part of your milestones.

This competition theme focuses on Artificial Intelligence (AI) for complex processes in rail. We 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 optimisation

Data challenges are often complex to resolve, and there is rarely a single, definitive solution involving just one supplier. Therefore, applicants are encouraged to work with other suppliers to provide an end to end solution through multiple point solutions that can be integrated into a tech stack.

A live demonstration must be included that will allow HS2 or Network Rail and others to assess the solution.

We encourage applicants to focus on AI powered solutions in the following areas:

• process mining and simulation
• 3D modelling and generative design
• data analytics
• predictive analytics and decision intelligence
• natural language query for business intelligence
• market research and trend analysis
• robotic process automation (RPA)
• workflow automation
• cognitive document processing and optical character recognition
• supply chain optimisation
• risk management
• financial forecasting and budgeting
• programme optimisation

We discourage applicants from focusing on solutions in the following areas:

• digital twins
• virtual and augmented reality
• automated data cleansing and augmentation
• enterprise resource planning (ERP)
• conversational AI and chatbots
• safety applications
• operational rail technology
• customer facing applications
• duplicate existing technologies

Innovate UK and DfT held a briefing on 8 April: click here to watch the recording.

If you would like help to find a railway partner or specialist subcontractor, contact Ben Cullen, Knowledge Transfer Manager for Rail at Innovate UK Business Connect.

Innovate UK welcome and encourage applications from people of all backgrounds and are committed to making our application process accessible to everyone. This includes making reasonable adjustments, for people who have a disability or a long-term condition and face barriers applying to us. You can contact Innovate UK by email or call 0300 321 4357 (ideally at least 15 days before competition closes).