26 Nov 2021

Recruitment is underway for the fourth instalment of Wales’ leading rail-dedicated innovation programme.

Lab by Transport for Wales is a pioneering 12-week accelerator programme offering an exciting opportunity for business innovators to develop ideas to improve rail users’ experiences.

With three successful schemes already completed since its launch in January 2020, recruitment has now started for a fourth group of creative tech talent start-ups from across Wales and the rest of the UK.

Once recruitment is complete, the start-ups will work closely with TfW to receive dedicated mentoring from business experts to develop their products and innovations, gearing up towards a final demonstration day where they will pitch their ideas to leading TfW decision-makers.

Winners will then be awarded funds to develop their products further and help towards delivering the railway of the future.

As the previous rounds of recruitment, the programme will be delivered remotely, allowing start-ups to participate online.

Transport for Wales has already successfully helped over 30 budding start-ups develop their ideas through the first three cohorts of the programme, with 24 of these reaching business case review.

Whilst TfW are unable to pursue every start-up company’s innovations, the advice, guidance, and support of working with the Alt Labs team and business experts has been invaluable to the development of those companies’ products, on occasion still leading to opportunities to work together despite not being chosen on demo day.

The winners of the second cohort, Spatial Cortex, have continued to work with TfW on their MOVA technology that aims to analyse and look at tools to reduce the risk of muscular-skeletal injuries while conducting track work.

Michael Davies, TfW’s Insight and Innovation Manager said: “The standard of companies pitching during the previous three rounds of recruitment has been incredibly high, so we’re really looking forward what the latest group of tech innovators will offer.

“The start-ups are set questions which reflect some of the real-world challenges we face around infrastructure, safety, and security, as well as looking at fresh ways of tackling one of the biggest challenges public transport has faced in recent times: how we encourage people to choose public transport in the future. We’re looking forward to getting started.”

If you would like to apply to be part of the fourth cohort of the innovation programme, you can do so here: https://www.f6s.com/lab-by-transport-for-wales-cohort-4/