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Mujadded Alif from the University of Huddersfield’s Institute of Railway Research came out on top in the Future of Rail Presentation Competition, an annual event held to showcase the cutting-edge work being done by early-career engineers around the country.
Held on 13 May at the Institution’s Birdcage Walk headquarters in Westminster, the Railway Division event featured six finalists, each of whom had already won regional heats. The competitors presented on everything from AI-enabled predictive maintenance to door speed measurement to combat ‘trap and drag’ incidents, in front of an audience of railway professionals and industry leaders.
“It was a real honour to win, especially given the high standard of presentations from the other finalists,” Alif told Professional Engineering. “Reaching the national final was already a fantastic achievement, so to be selected as the overall winner was both surprising and very rewarding.”
Securing him a prize of £1,000, Alif’s winning presentation focused on a Department for Transport-supported project using AI to automatically measure railway wheel flanges from images.
“Wheel condition is a critical aspect of railway safety and maintenance,” Alif said. “The aim of the project is to make measurements faster, more accessible and less dependent on specialised equipment. In the future, technologies like this could help support more frequent inspections, improve maintenance planning, reduce costs and contribute to a more reliable railway network.”
More efficient maintenance was also the focus of the presentation by Danny Evans, the first runner-up. The Network Rail overhead-line asset engineer detailed a new technique using drone surveys to capture point cloud data of infrastructure, from which layouts and cross-section drawings can be extracted.
“It’s slightly different to how it has traditionally been done, which is quite manual on-site surveys,” Evans told Professional Engineering.
Maintainers use the records to carefully and precisely replace everything after a fault or defect. “Having those [records] up-to-date, consistent and available helps the maintainer deliver the work safer, and in turn gets the lines back up and running quicker.”
A project on the railway between Bow in east London and Shenfield in Essex provided savings of £1.5m compared with traditional methods and a 75% reduction in ‘boots on ballast’, Evans said. The presentation covered his involvement, the key findings and how he subsequently brought the same approach to the East Coast Main Line.
The second runner-up was James Fitzmaurice from Angel Trains, with a presentation on the need for fleet engineers.
Confidence boost
Success in the Future of Rail contest can act as a springboard for a rich and rewarding continuing career in the sector. “Winning the competition has given me greater confidence in my work and opened up new opportunities to discuss research with industry stakeholders,” Alif said.
The Institution unites engineers from different backgrounds, encourages knowledge sharing and supports the development of future talent, he added. “As someone working at the intersection of AI and railway engineering, it is a privilege to have my work recognised through one of its flagship competitions.”
The competition was a “really good experience,” Evans said. “It highlighted how far I’d come, from when I’d been in university and my presentations would almost entirely consist of reading from a script… having that opportunity and challenge to present on a bigger stage, and feeling confident in doing that, it highlighted how far I’d come.”
He added: “When I’ve got a project that I've been working on… being able to condense that into a simple and digestible form for senior leaders or key stakeholders will massively improve the engagement I get.”
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Content published by Professional Engineering does not necessarily represent the views of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.