Contracts for Innovation: FOAK 2025 – Bridge Strikes

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 bridge strikes. We are seeking innovative solutions to prevent bridge strikes and mitigate their impact when they occur.

Bridge strikes are a safety incident where a road vehicle or its load, or a waterborne vessel or its load, collide with the structure of a bridge. This includes tall vehicles hitting low bridges, as well as incidents where vehicles strike bridge supports or parapets on road-over-rail bridges, potentially sending debris onto the tracks.

Bridge strikes remain a persistent issue for the UK’s transport network. Over 1,500 bridge strikes are recorded on Network Rail infrastructure each year. Every bridge strike has the potential to cause serious harm to members of the travelling public, including railway users and road users.

Due to the risks involved, railway operations are restricted until the bridge structure and tracks have been inspected and the inspection confirms the track and structure are undamaged, debris-free and safe for trains.

Beyond safety risks, bridge strikes cause costly disruption to journeys. Many incidents result in damage to bridges and vehicles, requiring expensive repairs. The rail industry alone incurs annual costs exceeding £20 million.

Network Rail, a major owner of bridge assets, has a bridge strike strategy which focusses on two aspects:

• reducing the likelihood of bridge strikes
• mitigating their impact on railway safety, operational performance and road users when they occur

Innovation opportunities should address these two aspects and generally fall into two categories which improve the bridge environment and those which support vehicle drivers and operators.

Improvements in the bridge environment may aim to:

• prevent bridge strikes from occurring
• minimise damage to infrastructure or trains if they do occur
• improve detection of incidents and reduce response times
• reduce time taken to remove temporary restrictions following bridge strike incidents
• improve data gathering, to help understand the root cause of incidents and also gather evidence to support financial recovery

There are over 9,000 at-risk railway bridges across the country, spanning urban and remote areas as well as various bridge types. Improvements must be scalable, cost effective, and require minimal site-specific design.

The availability of reliable power supplies and the ease and expense of maintenance are examples of challenges which limit the success of conventional approaches.

Improvements to support vehicle drivers and operators may aim to:

• dynamically plan and re-plan routes to avoid low bridges or alert drivers to low clearance obstructions nearby
• ensure drivers know their vehicle’s accurate, up to date height before each journey
• assist drivers in interpreting signage and explore how technology can safely intervene if warnings are ignored
• enhance awareness and education efforts
• prevent poor alignment with arch bridges
• reduce errors in stowing loads

Vehicle operators often manage large fleets, with ownership frequently changing. Like bridge focused improvements, those for vehicle operations should be cost effective and scalable for widespread adoption. Easily transferable systems between vehicles would be beneficial.

We encourage applicants to focus on innovative solutions which:

• harness technology to reduce the likelihood and impact of bridge strikes, addressing the challenges outlined
• address multiple challenges outlined
• are not targeted to a specific bridge or vehicle and confer a wider reaching benefit, for example, national initiatives
• address realistic operational scenarios and demonstrate potential partnerships with relevant stakeholders, for example, bridge owners, local highway authorities, enforcement agencies or freight and bus operators
• consider a broad range of different kinds of vehicles that can be involved in bridge strikes, acknowledging variations in regulations
• consider psychological and behavioural factors that contribute to bridge strikes

We discourage applicants from focusing on solutions which:

• are bespoke, costly systems suited to a limited number of structures or vehicles, without a clear plan for scaling and cost reduction
• improve one aspect at the expense of another, for example, enhancing railway safety while compromising highway safety or improving train performance at the cost of safety
• negatively impact train performance
• lack a demonstration plan or have no feasible path to real-world trials within the project timeframe
• fail to meet fundamental safety, operational standards, highway or rail regulations
• duplicate existing technologies

Various technologies are already in use. Projects must address challenges of reliability and scalability while being truly innovative and first of their kind.

Projects must include a live demonstration in a representative railway, road, or vehicle environment. They should showcase collaboration with infrastructure owners, local highway authorities, freight or bus operators, digital solution providers, or enforcement agencies. Additionally, projects should outline a clear strategy for scaling and commercialising the solution.

Useful reference information for applicants:

• Network Rail. Prevention of bridge strikes. Useful resources
• Network Rail. Bridge strikes: when and where they occur
• Network Rail. The risk of bridge strikes
• Network Rail. Responding to bridges strikes
• Network Rail. Wise up, size up
• Network Rail, Low Headroom Bridge Data
• Department of Transport, UK. How to prevent vehicles from hitting bridges
• Department of Transport, UK. Traffic signs manual – Chapter 4
• Traffic Commissioners for Great Britain. Bridge Strike Guidance
• US NCHRP Research Report. Bridge and tunnel strikes. A guide for prevention and mitigation
• FORS. Prevention of bridge strikes toolkit
• RSSB. Reducing the number and impact of vehicle strikes on railway underline bridges (T854)

Examples of existing solutions:

• Network Rail. New technology trialled in battle against bridge strike disruption on East Coast Main Line
• Logistics UK. Bridge Strikes fact sheet
• Logistics UK. Prevention of bridge strikes CPD
• VUE group. Low bridge alerting system LBAS
• BES Group. Over-height protection systems

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).