Contracts for Innovation: FOAK26

Overview

Innovate UK, working with the Department for Transport, will invest up to £4.3 million through this Contracts for Innovation competition to support rail innovation across the UK.

FOAK26 is part of the Department for Transport’s First of a Kind Programme, which helps innovative suppliers develop high-maturity demonstrations that can be integrated into the railway system. The competition is designed to accelerate market readiness for solutions that address priority rail challenges across safety, customer experience, infrastructure resilience, environmental performance and operational efficiency.

Successful applicants will receive a contract, rather than grant funding, to develop a prototype, carry out field testing and demonstrate their solution in a representative railway environment.

This competition is split into eight challenges:

• Challenge 1: Safe Concurrent High-Speed Rail Installation in Constrained Environments
• Challenge 2: UK Dark Skies: Drone Operations BVLOS
• Challenge 3: Improving Customer Experience in Isolated Spaces
• Challenge 4: Digital Hazard Log
• Challenge 5: Scour Risks to Structures
• Challenge 6: Structures: Rapid Behaviour Verification to Support Assessment and Intervention Decisions
• Challenge 7: Green Engineering Solutions for Earthworks Resilience and Biodiversity Net Gain
• Challenge 8: Enhancing Rail Adhesion Through Intelligent Vegetation Management and Biodiversity-Positive Interventions

Scope

Innovate UK and the Department for Transport are collaborating with the rail industry to accelerate and increase the adoption of innovation to improve UK railways through the First of a Kind Programme.

The FOAK Programme addresses industry challenges by running innovation competitions. These competitions focus on collaboration with industry and deliver high-maturity demonstrations, enabling efficient integration into the railway system.

Proposals must already be at Rail Industry Readiness Level 5 or above, with evidence provided as part of the application.

Projects must:

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

Applications must include a credible and practical route to market, including a plan to commercialise the results.

A key project deliverable must be a demonstration event and trial. Demonstration and trialling must take place in an environment representative of where the solution will be deployed, allowing for effective evaluation.

Projects are expected to include an integration partner to support demonstration and trialling. The demonstration and trial must take place as close to a live railway environment as possible, with all necessary permissions and approvals secured.

Example environments include:

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

Projects must also include an evaluation activity at the end of the project. This must measure data to assess the anticipated impact of the solution on the railway network, comparing baseline data with the improvement from the demonstration or trial.

Key themes and topics

Projects can focus on one of the following specific challenges:

Grow the economy by enhancing the transport network, on time and on budget:

• Challenge 1: Safe Concurrent High-Speed Rail Installation in Constrained Environments. Stakeholder: HS2
• Challenge 2: UK Dark Skies: Drone Operations BVLOS. Stakeholder: Network Rail

Improve transport users’ experience, ensuring that the network is safe, reliable and inclusive:

• Challenge 3: Improving Customer Experience in Isolated Spaces. Stakeholders: TfL, DLR and Rail North Partnership
• Challenge 4: Digital Hazard Log. Stakeholders: Network Rail and Southern Renewals Enterprise
• Challenge 5: Scour Risks to Structures. Stakeholder: Network Rail
• Challenge 6: Structures: Rapid Behaviour Verification to Support Assessment and Intervention Decisions. Stakeholder: Network Rail

Reduce environmental impacts by tackling climate change and improving air quality by decarbonising transport:

• Challenge 7: Green Engineering Solutions for Earthworks Resilience and Biodiversity Net Gain. Stakeholders: Network Rail, TfL and Southern Renewals Enterprise
• Challenge 8: Enhancing Rail Adhesion Through Intelligent Vegetation Management and Biodiversity-Positive Interventions. Stakeholders: TfL and Network Rail

Only one challenge should be selected per application. If a project covers multiple challenges, applicants should choose the challenge where the majority of the work will be undertaken.

Projects will not be funded if they:

• are not original in scope and duplicate someone else’s work
• are not likely to be successfully exploited by the rail industry to deliver benefits to rail or light rail organisations and their customers
• are not at Rail Industry Readiness Level 5 or above
• are unable to deliver a demonstration event and trial within a representative environment, offering potential customers a chance to use the innovation and give feedback
• do not include an evaluation and a plan to collect information to inform a cost or benefit analysis
• directly duplicate other UK government or EU funded initiatives already funded for delivery
• are covered by existing commercial agreements to deliver the proposed solutions

Project duration

3 to 7 months

Must start on 1 September 2026

End by 31 March 2027

Award value

Have total costs of no more than £210,000, inclusive of VAT

Funding rates

100% funded

Eligibility criteria

• Projects must be led by an organisation of any size, including organisations based in the UK, EU, EEA or internationally
• Contracts will be awarded to a single legal entity only
• Subcontractors can be used for specialist skills and can be businesses, research organisations, research and technology organisations or the third sector (charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)
• You must select whether you are VAT registered before entering your eligible project costs
• If you are VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and your total eligible project costs inclusive of VAT must not exceed £210,000
• If you are not VAT registered, you must enter your eligible project costs exclusive of VAT and your total project costs must not exceed £210,000

Your application must have at least 50% of the contract value attributed directly and exclusively to R&D services, including solution exploration and design. R&D can also include prototyping and field-testing the product or service

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