Podcast: Cordel – Interview with CEO and GM Product & Delivery

John Davis 

So our goal at Cordel is to create safer, more efficient and sustainable railways round the world. And we do this by producing specialist hardware and software that capture, analyse and report on large data sets within the transport sector. At this point, that’s typically a rail corridor. We then employ sophisticated artificial intelligence algorithms to help rail operators.

The better understand issues like clearances, gauging vegetation and other maintenance challenges.

John Davis 

So what? Cordel using the the hardware and software that I’ve just described and informed by deep sector knowledge of the railway industry, we modernise inspections using a range of different technologies to deliver high integrity automated solutions that optimise maintenance outcomes and this leads to a number of benefits for the rail companies that are partners. It can be cost savings driven by the much more precise identification of issues that need resolution.

It can be time savings created by capturing data about the rail corridor using passenger carrying trains rather than a specialist measurement fleet, and it also that leads to increased revenue as we maximise the time that passenger trains can be running.

And finally, there are health and safety benefits created by minimising the number of railway railway workers that are needing to walk the track to check for those issues.

Paul Mullins

Certainly so. Cordel specialises in installing unattended sensors onto revenue generating trains. These trains may be passenger service trains, freight locomotives or other maintenance vehicles. Add on track performing other duties.

Our goal is to ensure our senses are along for the ride and don’t require any human interaction to operate.

A pillar of our sensor network is our location services. Railways don’t usually care about location based on longitude and latitude from GPS systems. They are more interested in track code and mileage, similar to a street address in the road network.

Cordel is a world leader in accurately locating where a census data was captured.

Some of our senses are synchronised in this way are lighter.

Camera and GPS navigation systems. But our capability extends to 3rd party sensor systems that need to be geolocated and managed it at scale.

With so many senses operating and uploading data to cloud systems, a big data management problem is created.

Cordel has developed a number of web-based data management tools that allow us to triage data and provide access to information that was previously difficult to share within large railway organisations.

One of the ways we’ve created data is by deploying our AI and machine learning tools on the captured data. This allows large volumes of data to be processed at scale for specific engineering problems related to the inspection and maintenance of railway networks.

Using these techniques, Cordel can process billions of points in lighter or hundreds of hours in video to extract that one defect that is critical issue for the operation of a safe railway network.

Colonel systems have improved exponentially over the past 12 months, with several clients providing independent validation of our AI analytics.

Paul Mullins

Absolutely. So Cordel’s key differentiator is our scalability Cordel’s ability to capture and process is second to none. No other inspection process is capturing hundreds of thousands of miles per year and processing that data within weeks of capture. This can be put down to Cordel’s unique use of AI and machine learning. So allow railway company workers to inspect their assets at a pace never seen before.

What previously would take six months or more to deliver results to a client can now be done in a week or two and at a fraction of the cost.

Paul Mullins

Of course. So we operate across three major regions in particular Australia, the UK and the USA.

In those regions, we have stand out customers in each region that are all embracing technology to improve their inspection processes.

Typically, our customers are the larger class one type railways such as a RTC, Amtrak and Network Rail.

These railways have vast areas of rail infrastructure and 10s of thousands of assets to manage and maintain.

The old standards and processes in rail, while asset management dictate that regular inspections are conducted using rudimentary techniques such as tape measures, plug bulbs and worker worker effort on tracks. These processes are expensive and inefficient.

Our ability to automate these mundane measurements and quickly at unify defects means these customers can spend more time preventing defects and less time, meaning time based inspection intervals dictated by the standards.

John Davis  

Thanks, Robin. Well, when we raise funds back in April, the primary goal goal for us was to drive further progress in the US there are 8 Tier 1 railroads that are are our key targets and it’s there that we see the most significant growth opportunity.

We also believe, though, that we can leverage the existing relationships we have in the UK with Network Rail and Angel currently to grow our revenue based significantly here in particular the recent three 100 approval that we were awarded gives us credibility and opens doors to future work.

And finally, we see mainland Europe as another territory where we can deliver significant growth.

The attitude in many other countries, both in Europe and in the US in fact, is that if you can manage to work successfully with Network Rail in the UK, which has lots of challenges around concentration of track in a small space and legacy infrastructure, then you have achieved something genuinely impressive.

We want to leverage that internationally in the coming years.

John Davis  

Yeah, absolutely. So the Funds that we raised in April and were a critical part of our future growth strategy.

We ended the year on June 30th, 2023 and we are happy with the unaudited FY23 outturn that we achieved, which is in line with market forecasts. We will obviously announce the numbers in much greater detail once we and our auditors have done the necessary work to confirm them.

We’re also extremely pleased with recruitment in Australia where we’ve been increasing the size of our development and engineering teams and our product and delivery capability.

In the UK, where we’ve increased and improved our sales project and product resources.

And also in the US where we put in place what we needed on project and delivery and put in place better sales support.

We were in discussions still with a potential new sales higher in the US as well and our pipeline of opportunity has grown substantially in the US, largely based on leveraging the Amtrak contract secured earlier this calendar year. In the UK, we have a clear sense of how we can position ourselves to have the best possible chance of winning several very large contracts. And finally, we have proposals in flight with three new geographies in Europe and the Middle East.

John Davis  

Yeah, well, a business like Cordel obviously faces many of the challenges that anyone familiar with high growth tech LED companies face day in, day out. We have a balancing act to manage. We need to make the most of the market opportunity and capture new business opportunities where we can, but also ensure that we do not compromise on delivering at scale for our existing and new clients.

We’re delighted with the progress that we are making so far, but constantly mindful of managing that challenge.

The second challenge we have is is around the rail industry. It’s a very traditional industry and the pace of change can be very slow. We are new, we are innovative and we’re different, which can of course be extremely positive, but it also brings with it challenges in terms of bringing people with us.
The approval that we have secured and those that we are working on are critical for us in helping with credibility and the confidence that that breeds.
And the final challenge that I would highlight is one of communication. We have staff in the UK, in Australia and in the US and the pure logistics of this can be challenging. It heightens the need for excellent and open communication, something which everyone in the business is focused on.
We recently finalised the core values that we lived to at Cordel Unity, humility, integrity, curiosity, excellent and ambition.

And it is the first of these unity that I think we need to hold particularly dear as we strive to grow the business to £5 million of revenue and then on to 10 millions of pounds of revenue in the next two to three years.

Robin Byde  
Well, thank you very much, John and Paul, that was fascinating. And Cordel seems to be making great progress. Thank you again.