Why industry-wide collaboration will 'forever be valuable'

This month we're joined by Vaibhav Puri, RSSB's Director of Sector Strategy and Transformation, to speak about the value of industry-wide collaboration for the rail sector.

As well as the benefits, Vaibhav touches on how RSSB facilitates this collaboration, what 'good' looks like, and some challenges and misconceptions. He also discusses the role that collaboration will play in innovation and creating a strong future for rail.

Find out more at https://www.rssb.co.uk/

Transcript

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Host [00.17]: From enhancing safety measures to improving efficiency and sustainability, working together across the industry has always been pivotal for rail. But while its benefits are clear, collaboration isn't always as straightforward as some may think it is.

So, with us today is Vaibhav Puri, our Director of Sector Strategy and Transformation. He’ll be speaking with us about what goes into collaboration, how RSSB facilitates industry-wide collaboration, and some of its benefits, challenges, and misconceptions. 

Hi Vaibhav, and thank you for joining us today. 

Vaibhav Puri [00.48]: Hi Jasmin, how are you doing? 

Host [00.50]: Let’s get straight into it. Why is industry-wide collaboration important?

Vaibhav [00.54]: The rail sector in particular is a complex system that many actors, many people work together to make the railway work. And in that context, it’s important that there are certain things that people work collectively together to do. And collaboration at the heart of it is open sharing of ideas, sharing of good practice. And in a complex system, where there are many actors than many interfaces, you want to do it effectively. You want to do it in a way that in turn leads to better solutions for the whole system, and that often will rely on other people.

The other good bit about collaboration is it is an efficient way of solving a problem. You yourself cannot solve everything, and often that is the case in the railway. You will need to work with other people, and solving a complicated problem by yourself—as I’m sure we all have experienced at different times in our lives—can be costly and time-consuming, and so coming together with others who have similar problems or have different perspectives on the same problem is a very good way of actually really enhancing and making sure that, I guess, the sum of the parts is more than an individual working on something.

And finally, I think it leads to a better culture for the sector. People talking to each other, sharing good ideas, sharing their experiences, sharing the different perspectives will lead to a better culture for the sector and surely is a good thing for the sector to do. 

Host [02.09]: And what does good collaboration look like? Are there any basic requirements? 

Vaibhav [02.13]: I think three things, in my view, are very important in terms of collaboration. Once you agree it’s good to share ideas, that’s great. What next? How do you do it effectively?

I think the first key element of collaboration is making sure that you provide a platform. That there’s a mechanism by which the entities, different actors can talk to each other and talk to each other in a way that is representative of the railway system. So, it’s not two organisations just speaking to each other bilaterally because anybody can do that, and people should do it. But particularly, when you’re solving problems that are cross-sector and across interfaces, it’s important that those problems are solved in a way where all the voices in the sector come together. 

I think the second key requirement here is to collectively agree decisions, collectively agree and take decisions. The sector faces many complex problems, has always done, and has always risen to the challenge. And one of the ways it’s done it is by coming together and collectively agreeing, collectively deciding what the right approach should be across the railway system.

And perhaps last but not least is, OK, you’re speaking to each other, OK, you are collectively agreeing decisions, very good. However, whatever comes out, whatever you decide collectively, has to have some legitimacy—particularly legitimacy with people who essentially are overseeing, for example, safety, like the regulator. The regulator needs to assure himself or herself in terms of, how is the sector doing? Is the sector actually coming up with solutions that are in the best interest of the whole railway system or not? And by providing a mechanism that makes collective decisions legitimate and acceptable to particularly the government and organisations and positions of authority is critical because that gives confidence. 

Host [03.51]: Thanks, Vaibhav. And how does RSSB help the rail industry achieve all of these things?

Vaibhav [03.56]: Firstly, RSSB—through its committee and group structure and governance, essentially—allows all the parts of the sector to have a voice in the discussions that are relevant to them. By providing facilitation, by providing the support to the sector in collectively agreeing these things, particularly as an independent party that doesn’t have a stake in the decisions, really provides confidence. So, RSSB’s work in helping the sector openly communicate with each other, discuss issues, discuss failures, discuss challenges, and very openly share how each individual organisation or person is dealing with them is very, very important. 

I think secondly, when it comes to collective decision making, the key aspect of any decision making is, you know, having the right evidence, approaching it objectively, making decisions, and really understanding if there are, you know, what are the intended consequences, but also the unintended ones. And here again, RSSB with its central expertise—all the way from engineering to people who have expertise in regulation and legislation, etc., and rail operations—can provide that evidence base, that rational evidence base coming independently to the problem, to the group, to the wider group, so that they can sort of see what the fallout is, you know, what the trade-offs are, what the pros and cons are, and basically use that combined with their own knowledge to make good decisions collectively. 

The best thing about this process is by inserting this objectivity, this independence, into the process, allows everybody to say, to really rely on the evidence that is being presented. There is no suspicion, there is no concern about, oh, ‘this information may be biased towards one actor or the other’. And that particular independent objectivity is inserted by RSSB. 

And perhaps the third point of legitimacy that I talked about, well here, one of the ways in which RSSB manages to create that legitimacy is by agreeing the governance of some of these things. So, how will communication take place? How will decisions be taken? What the principles are? How, you know, most of our decisions are taken by consensus, which is essentially an absence of sustained objection. So, by definition, everybody has a veto. You want a solution that works for everyone. And by having a governance that is then approved by, for example, our Railway Group Standards Code and is approved by the Office of Rail and Road, as well as the sector, by approving the governance, it ensures that whatever comes out of that process can be heavily relied on. We can be confident that good outputs are being produced.

Host [06.17]: So, what’s the value of collaboration for industry? And what are some of the specific ways in which industry benefits from what we’re able to facilitate at RSSB? 

Vaibhav [06.26]: One of the best bits of value that I think RSSB provides is it creates an openness to share information. You know, you can’t put a value on that. You want to create a sector environment where, particularly when you’re talking about safety, is for people to turn up and without any concern for any reprisals are able to essentially raise an issue that they are concerned about and have a mechanism through which that discussion can happen maturely based on evidence and a resolution can be sought. I think that it’s very, very important to the wider culture of the sector for that to be enhanced, and I think the RSSB mechanism provides that. 

And last but not least, and I think there’s some good examples of this, like the collaboration that happened in the freight area. I mean freight, if you look at the freight sector, it’s an enormously commercially competitive sector. And in that particular environment, you’re asking these private companies to come together and agree. And it’s a great, you know—a lot of kudos should be given to the freight sector to come together to essentially say, when it comes to safety, we will collectively agree what the priorities are. We’ll try and understand what the risk profile is, we’ll try and understand what we need to do collectively. And that, again, you’re essentially talking about private companies where essentially competitors coming together, realising that you are dealing with something that affects everybody. And again, that’s another mechanism that RSSB has majorly facilitated. 

Host [07.39]: And do you think there are any misconceptions about rail industry collaboration? 

Vaibhav [07.43]: I think the first one is, and I don’t know who said this, but I think ‘I’ve searched all the parks and all the cities and found no statues of committees’ is a good one. I think the first, perhaps, criticism sometimes can be that decisions can take too long. If you are relying on a collaborative structure where lots of parties are involved, potentially, decisions might not be taken quickly enough. But I think it’s important to then take a step back and ask yourself what kind of decisions are being taken. And in reality, the kinds of decisions that the sector is dealing with often is multifaceted, affecting many organisations. And therefore, the most effective way of finding solutions to that kind of problem is to get people together in a committee, in a group, or in a meeting and for collectively agreeing what happens and how to move forward. So, I think that’s the first point I would make this, often a misconception about what is a committee doing? You know, what kind of decisions is it taking? 

And I think on the decisions bit is my second quote, in a way, I think—and again, I don’t know who said this, so I’ve clearly not done my homework is—I think ‘a camel is a horse designed by a committee’, which is, you know, whatever decisions that are taken in a committee will be suboptimal. You’ll come up with something that I could have come up with much better. But I’ll take that quote further. I think it depends on what the committee was deciding. Because if you’re trying to get across a desert in the heat, then perhaps camel was the right thing, not the horse. I think the nature of decisions matter. Most of our committees tend to focus on very technical areas. It’s important to really recognise that what people are doing in committees are really trying to find technical solutions. I think sometimes there’s a criticism perhaps that not enough is understood around the economic implications of those decisions. And in a lot of cases, the standards that are produced pretty much in all cases, there’s an impact assessment that is produced. But again, it’s focusing on the implications of an engineering constraint being X versus Y. It’s fundamentally still a discussion about what’s technically viable. And often, those decisions impact other things that are broader, like deciding to electrify a route or deciding to introduce a new train. So, unsurprisingly, those high-level decisions have a lot of weight hanging on them. And whilst the committees are discussing something very specific, and I think linking those two, I think is an interesting challenge that the sector has to deal with. And I must say, and I’m obviously biased, I think the sector—and I have to again emphasise it’s the sector—most times than not gets that right. 

Host [10.03]: Thanks Vaibhav. I’d like to tap into your area of expertise a little bit now. So, transformation is in your job title, and RSSB's Futures Lab sits within your directorate. What’s your view on industry-wide collaboration and rail’s ability to innovate? 

Vaibhav [10.18]: Increasingly, the sector is facing challenges that are difficult now and will become even more complicated in the future. You know, we can be talking about climate change, weather resilience, the rapid introduction of AI into the sector, the wide-scale digitisation that is happening across the sector, and automation, and other aspects being introduced. So, there’s some complicated challenges that the sector has, together with all of the financial constraints, making sure that we contribute to net zero and the health and well-being aspect, which is an area that RSSB is becoming more and more active in. In all of these cases, the sector has to really change its perspective in certain areas to see how better value can be derived collectively.

The good thing here is cross-sector collaboration as a thing will forever be valuable and will become increasingly more valuable. But at the same time, I think it creates a challenge because when we are talking about transformative, disruptive things or change to the sector itself, it has its own pros and cons, its own implications, its own timelines. In some cases, you may have to make a change now, and the benefits of that might come 5, 10 years later. And I think in those areas, one of the things that we have to do more effectively, and Futures Lab is certainly exploring that, is what kind of information can be provided to the sector so that it can become more resilient? I think it’s a very exciting time because we have the collective mechanism to decide things and address the challenges we face now. We have the opportunity through the work that certainly my team is doing to start to expose those things which will make us more resilient to the future, things we have to be prepared for, and then provide that information back into the system.

Host [11.55]: So, sticking with that future theme, collaboration is also a key part of our Strategic Business Plan for the next 5 years. How will be build on our current efforts to continue connecting the various parts of our complex industry? And do you anticipate any future challenges in rail collaboration?

Vaibhav [12.11]: I think the Business Plan, as you know, has in it some very interesting strategic multipliers, which is what we have labelled strategic multipliers, which are focused on automation, AI, testing, particularly digital testing. If you look at all of these challenges, again, they will rely on the sector collectively agreeing and codifying how it wishes to approach them, and so our sharp focus remains on ensuring that collaboration occurs in the sector in whatever shape, and the sector keeps changing and reform is underway, and is still able to, I guess, adhere to those key principles I perhaps spoke of at the beginning, which is no voice is too small. How do we ensure everybody’s voice continues to be heard? How do we ensure that they have, everybody has, a stake in the decisions? And our job, I think, our challenge remains making sure we keep drumming that support around why this is essential, and why this is absolutely critical going forward, because what you don’t want is that little voice to be lost.

Host [13.07]: Vaibhav, thank you so much for joining us today. And thank you for listening! 

If you want to learn more about RSSB and the work we do across all aspects of the rail industry, please visit our website. 

We look forward to you joining us for the next episode. And in the meantime, safe travels!