RSSB Strategic Business Plan 2024-2029

Tools and services we are producing for our members

Strategic business areas

Our strategic business areas (SBAs) describe the goals for which we and our members are striving. The SBAs structure what we do into topics for industry: safer rail, healthier rail, harmonised rail, efficient rail, future rail, and sustainable rail. The SBAs are the constant organising principles for our work, although emphasis within each SBA may change over time.

Safer Rail

Our vision is a safe railway for the whole network. We will deliver effective and practical solutions that address the pain points experienced by members focussing on asset integrity, workforce safety, public safety, safety performance monitoring, train accident risk, and climate change adaptation. These solutions will be delivered through our leadership of the rail industry’s health and safety strategy, to be relaunched in 2024. We will provide independent, evidence-based leadership, and identify problems and opportunities to solve these more efficiently at the system level through enhanced collaboration on risk analysis and data insights. We will also drive an increase in risk management maturity within Railway Undertakings and Infrastructure Managers.

Healthier Rail

Our vision is to have a healthier railway workforce, by putting rational decision-making for investments in a healthier railway on par with a safer railway, and to protect the health of passengers. We will do this through independent, evidence-based leadership, using data and analysis, working with the industry collaboratively to reduce the economic impacts of ill health, and helping to improve productivity. We will focus on wellbeing, including mental health and fatigue management, further develop our public health capability, identify preventative solutions through collaboration, and use data-led approaches in innovative and value-adding ways.

Harmonised Rail

Our vision is to enhance rail sector interoperability and compatibility through more economic and efficient management of infrastructure, trains, and operations. We will deliver new and revised standards to support railway engineering and operations across rolling stock, plant, infrastructure, electrification, signalling, telecoms, operational systems, and data and telematics. Standards will complement our other SBAs and the wider industry, for example helping to manage cyber security risk, medical requirements, battery and hydrogen trains, and digital signalling. We will continue to have a central role in the management of National Technical Specification Notices (NTSN), facilitating the UK’s contribution to global rail standardisation in conjunction with the British Standards Institute, and maintain strong links with the EU Agency for Rail and other global partners.

Efficient Rail

Our vision is to deliver new knowledge, tools, and solutions so the rail industry’s affordability and reliability improves. Through our independent and cross-industry research programme, largely funded by DfT, we will look at ways in which we can make the most of existing assets without compromising safety or requiring capital expenditure. We will also unlock future change by supporting pre-commercial development of solutions novel to the rail industry and informing the standardisation and safety analysis needed to de-risk their deployment.

Future Rail

Our vision is to generate, facilitate, pursue, and adopt novel solutions so the rail industry is fit for the future. Our research work complemented by our new Futures Lab capability will continue to address the sector’s knowledge gaps to enable it and give it confidence as it charts a path to the railway of the future. Our work will focus on current and future challenges around weather resilience and climate change adaptation, digitisation, automation, and AI, with the aim of improving industry preparedness and resilience.

Sustainable Rail

Our vision is to make our industry even more sustainable, using RSSB technical expertise, implementation tools, and data services to help the railway embed and deliver the Sustainable Rail Blueprint. We will pursue the blueprint goals across three themes: emissions – air quality, noise, and carbon; natural environment – water, waste, and biodiversity; social sustainability – careers, community, and accessibility. We will provide technical advice and data services for monitoring, reporting, and assuring sustainability progress, along with the resources, training, and guidance to build capability.