Changing Standards - Infrastructure Interconnectivity After Brexit

The 23rd of June 2016 seems a lifetime ago now, but for all the heat and noise that has been engendered, there has been little movement around how the UK will shift its approach to the interconnectivity of infrastructure systems with Europe.

At first sight the UK’s decision to leave the EU will likely have serious implications on the future development and use of standards, codes and guidance for industry across the infrastructure sector.

Standards differ from regulations in that they are neither issued by government nor, save for some exceptions, binding. Instead they provide codes and guidance for industry that represent a consensus of good practice and are usually developed through processes managed by independent standards organizations, in the UK’s case the British Standards Institution (BSI). 

We need to consider what drives the creation of standards. While simplistic, I believe that we can group these into three areas:-

• Standards designed to manage process.
• Standards that relate to ensuring product compatibility.
• Standards that relate to system interoperability.

How these groups of standards interact and play off each other, the flexibility which we have to alter these will shape the interconnectivity of our infrastructure systems in a post Brexit world.

What we do with them will impact our ports, our airports, our rail and our roads, but we are part of not just a European economy, but a global market and as we set our island on a different course, it is important to be realistic about the extent to which we can set our own course.

Let us consider these one at a time.

System interoperability is designed to ensure that major systems function effectively.

For example, let us consider the way that standardised shipping containers operate across the world. ISO 6346 describes the international standard for identifying a shipping container covers the serial number, owner, country code, and size of any given shipping container. It is a simple standard which has operated effectively since the late 1960's, without which the entire global process of container shipping would not function.

If the UK did not adhere to it, we would be unable to partake in the global freight network. Ships across the world would be incapable of carrying non-standard containers and simple, crude economies of scale would hold us back from moving to a different position. Standards exist for both container design and tracking, but it is not the standards themselves that would hold our ports back from change, but global inertia. With the best will in the world, we would not have a voice for change.

Similarly, when we look at the mechanics of air travel, we recognise that just as goods are mobile, so are people and their expectations are increasingly of an interconnected world.

Holiday makers and business people, arrriving into Heathrow or Gatwick have a reasonable expectation that their phones will work. We could view this as being highly inconvenient to the potential of rationalising our spectrum, of liberalising it, changing our telecoms infrastructure to better suit the needs of the United Kingdom - potentially unlocking a better customer experience through greater bandwidth for an ever increasing supply of cat videos and youtube trailers.

Unfortunately, radio waves do not conveniently stop at political or administrative boundaries. Anyone who has sat on the south coast one summers day and found themselves roaming onto a French network will understand.

Without adequate planning and management on a global basis, radio signals from different services would interfere with each other and it would be useless as a means of communication. This is recognised on a global basis and as a result, changes are conrolled under the Radio Regulations. 

While an extreme case, these principles do need to play into our understanding of how little flexibility we may have in reality with regards to changing on influencing some of the major standards that shape System Interoperability and the shape of our infrastructure, from port design through to the physical spacing of mobile phone masts across our landscape, dictated as they are by the propagation characteristics of their spectrum and the terrain of our land.

When we then step away from some of these macro level challenges, we then step into the world of product standardisation. We now understand why it is a good thing for radio design on aircraft to be able to communicate effectively, but those same principles - and they apply across sea, rail and road - flow through down to product design.

Products are designed to perform a function. They are things, items, shaped in one manner or another by the laws of physics. The impact of 400 tonnes of train on a railway track canted at 5 degrees is surprisingly similar whether outside Ormskirk or Omsk - please allow me a little bit of leeway for the climate here - and so our choice of steel, the rate of degredation becomes dictated by the economics of replacement and perceptions of risk.

It is in this arena that we start to see and understand the economic drivers that generate our fear of 'gold plating' in our standards, because the decision making process to define a product to deliver an output becomes increasingly grey.

A British railway engineer may have differing expectations for the inspection of rail, for the durability of rail versus an engineer in a different area of the world. These may be higher, they may be more expensive, but born out of the experience of events such as Hatfield and Ladbrooke grove, this does not necessarily make them wrong.

This country has long prided itself on engineering excellence and rather than a race to lower standards in a post Brexit world, we can equally make a case for exporting our knowledge, capability and safety assurance to new markets.

What I am describing here notably is the flexibility which we have to define the standards around the application of a product, but not so much the standards for the products themselves which shape our infrastructure.

All manufacturers conduct some localisation to their product, whether it is as simple as fitting a 3 pin mains plug or as complex as redesigning engine calibration for a car in the UK against Bolivia's rareified air. But there is a cost for this.

What price for us to maintain alignment with our biggest market versus achieving a bespoke, British solution?

In many areas, it may well not be our choice - where we choose to impose standards onto products, far more than onto process, we rapidly become exposed to the economics of dealing with mass production and a global marketplace.

High volume products, like mobile phones are global and our share of the global market is inconsequential. We will end up taking what the manufacturers give us.

In the automotive arena, we will undoubtedly have some opportunity for changing standards for the UK market. If we want our first generation of CAVs to be reading roadside positioning beacons rather than using optical recognition of roadside gantries, then I'm sure it will be a feasible discussion. Regulation could make that happen, but it will not alter the cost impact of shifting away from the complex interdependence that exists in supranational corporations that to some degree sit above the nation state.

Where we may have genuine flexibility in derograting from existing standards or moving to new standards is in how we deal with low volume, high cost units such as rolling stock. While moving away from European Technical Standards for Interoperability will undoubtedly impact the long term resale price of vehicles, we open up the opportunity to make different choices. For example, we could choose lighter, faster trains, with better braking capability. This would almost certainly result, in the longer term with lower maintenance on fixed rail infrastructure.

These are not easy choices however.

On the 23rd February 2007 a Virgin Pendolino derailed outside Grayrigg in Cumbria due to a faulty set of points. There was 1 death and 30 serious injuries as a direct consequence. The Pendolino, likened at the time to a 'tank' was remarkable in how the vehicle integrity survived a major accident. Choosing to move away from standards that define vehicle integrity and permit changing maintenance regimes and costs is a brave step for any engineer and potentially a terminal decision for a politician.

Brexit will not change inertia of this nature, whether in the rail industry or elsewhere.

For process related standards however, there is more positive news in that the principle of equivalence should prove acceptable - there are already precedents around airline security and data equivalence to name just two.

Mutual recognition may set some constraints on how our boundaries could shift, but there at least will be some flexibility for British Industry. Without this, we will of course then be in an era where our exporters will then be working to two or more sets of standards, something that will prove interesting for our international competitiveness.

Where does that leave us with regards to the impact on infrastructure interconnectivity after Brexit? Most likely firmly in the world of maginal gains, which as any engineer will tell you, is at the heart of every standard.

*** This article is a personal thought piece only. It in no way represents any position relating to my current employer ***

I welcome thoughts, feedback and general comment.

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Chris Docker.