European rail infrastructure managers discuss how to achieve greater excellence in performance and safety of their service delivery for customers and stakeholders.

At the invitation of the Swedish infrastructure manager Trafikverket, the High-Level Infrastructure Managers’ meeting took place in Stockholm. CEOs of all major European rail infrastructure managers discussed how to achieve greater excellence in performance and safety for their customers and stakeholders.

At the beginning of the meeting, the results of actions specified at previous high-level infrastructure manager meetings were presented: a paper highlighting examples of longer trains in Europe and 2012 KPIs on rail infrastructure performance and quality.

The event saw speakers of the Japanese and Turkish rail companies present global perspectives on maintenance, punctuality and investments. This was complemented by a presentation of RailNetEurope about the benefits of standardisation of core processes and tools for international traffic on freight corridors.

The last session of the event was dedicated to a workshop led by the Dutch infrastructure manager ProRail and the British infrastructure manager Network Rail. The workshop focused on Safety leadership and how to achieve a more holistic and pro-active approach to a fair safety culture in rail infrastructure managers and its importance for performance and punctuality. The participants brainstormed on rail infrastructure’s safety leadership and how to develop a clear safety vision for European infrastructure managers with commitments throughout the entire value chain of rail infrastructure management.

Gunnar Malm, Director General of Trafikverket and President of EIM, welcomed the exchange of best practice between all rail infrastructure managers: “Improving individual excellence in performance entails better service delivery to all our customers and stakeholders. The role of safety in terms of performance is crucial in this regard and I would be glad to see further discussions in this area on a wider European level.”

Libor Lochman, Executive Director of CER, said “The quality and capacity of the rail infrastructure is the essential prerequisite that makes rail attractive both to the railway undertaking as well as to their final clients. Today’s meeting demonstrated the interest of infrastructure companies to improve their mutual cooperation and to deliver the expected infrastructure parameters to their customers.”

Participants agreed to pursue further opportunities to develop benchmarking and exchange of best practices to drive safety leadership across Europe’s railways.