Global Centre of Rail Excellence: Railway Construction Innovation Competition

UK registered organisations can apply for grants for feasibility studies with projects to propose, deliver and demonstrate Innovation in Railway Construction.

This competition is a collaboration between Innovate UK, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and the Global Centre of Rail Excellence (GCRE). Funding is from BEIS.

Through this competition, Innovate UK (IUK) is investing in projects to propose, deliver and demonstrate innovation in Railway Construction.

The aim is to support initial feasibility studies outlining how applicants would deliver a demonstration of innovation in railway construction to the Global Centre of Rail Excellence (GCRE) site facility.

This is phase 1 of a potential 2-phase competition.

• Phase 1 Feasibility studies (this phase)
• Phase 2 Demonstration: potential invite only competition for successful phase 1 projects to develop and demonstrate their innovations

Successful feasibility studies will be invited to a phase 2 competition to apply for additional grant support to deliver and demonstrate their innovation at the GCRE site.

Projects must focus on one or more of the following themes:

• Trackwork challenges
• Overhead line electrification (OLE) challenges
• Earthworks and structures, including bridges and underpasses
• Power supply infrastructure, including alternative power supply technologies
• Telecommunications for railway based, 5G and line of route communications to operate the railway
• Security for perimeters, rail-side, physical and cyber security
• Monitoring and maintenance, digital twin, instrumentation of structures or monitoring of infrastructure
• Railway operation and automated systems
• Ecology and habitat creation