Rail SPEED

Information about Rail SPEED for suppliers

What is SPEED and why is it important?

SPEED has two core principles at its heart – to halve the time and slash the cost of project delivery, helping us provide a better service for passengers and freight users.​

With the country facing an unprecedented economic challenge, we need to get the most we can out of every pound we put in the ground, become a more attractive and efficient investment opportunity, and a more dependable partner that is easy to engage.

SPEED is forging a path ahead for the industry to adapt and meet these challenges head on. It will empower all of us in rail to be revolutionary in our thinking – to challenge how we do things and ask, how could we do this better?

We now have a chance to ensure rail plays a pivotal role in delivering a better service to the communities we serve, better value for taxpayers and become that dependable partner.

SPEED will give us the right mindset, and tools, to put passengers first and drive value.

To date we have achieved hundreds of millions of pounds worth of savings and cut years off programme schedules. We now need to work with our industry partners to drive the required changes to ensure we work as one team to deliver value for money outcomes for our customers and benefits for our passengers.

Success will deliver an industry that trusts knowledge and expertise, does not follow rules at the expense of common sense or better outcomes and is filled with people proud and excited to work in rail. It will remove layers of process and bureaucracy that add little value, while freeing up time to focus on doing the things that matter, safely.

When did SPEED start?

In June 2020, as part of the government’s Covid-19 recovery plan, a new taskforce was announced to deliver public investment projects faster and for less money.

Working with DfT, Network Rail identified six infrastructure projects of differing scale and stages of development, and asked them to consider past and current constraints, and what was needed to unblock them.

All six programmes developed proposals to reduce timescales and cost, and then defended their proposals through peer reviews and challenge panels. The outputs were grouped, standards challenged, toolkits developed and new ways of working established to support teams in “halving the time and slashing the cost” of delivering improvements to the railway.

What is the SPEED approach?

Every day we empower our people to always be safe, care about the railways, its users and each other and put teamwork at the heart of all we do.

Building on these values, the Project SPEED team has developed an approach to guide our day-to-day working, so we can all play our part in building a modern and efficient railway that we can be proud of.

It is about being bold, curious and challenging.

The SPEED approach is:

• ​​​​Outcomes focused – What needs to change to deliver the best value outcome for passengers?
• Accountable and empowered – What can I do to help passengers more?  Getting it right first time.
• Integrity and trust – Can we work better together to improve the passenger experience?
• Service focus – Support each other and the passenger experience

Contact us

Please contact SPEED@networkrail.co.uk to gain access to more information on the SPEED Hub.

Upcoming events

Any upcoming events will be published here.