Starting last year with the strong involvement of Robert Herbacek, Head of Capacity Management at ÖBB, the first steps were taken to revive the Operation Focus Group, which was initially thought as an interface and as a system vision, helping Infrastructure Managers (IMs) and Railway Undertaking (RUs) to solve their common issues in the field of operations.

The last meeting saw an increase in attendance with new members, which led to the conclusion that there is a growing interest to solve interface issues.
We have gradually re-started by revising the existing UIC 400-Series Leaflets on selecting and categorising in line with the principles established by the new Standardisation Platform.

Next week the OFG delegate will give our input and proposals for the further programme of work in line with the existing methodologies of evolution and transformation of the UIC Leaflets.

Another important field requested by the OFG participants will be to propose a set of best practice on track possession for maintenance and renewal work and improving capacity.
The OFG has been very active in revising the Capacity Leaflet (406), which includes the capacity calculation on nodes and the improvement of capacity calculation in general.

There is ongoing development on a new tool to assess the capacity consumption, a tool to be used by the UIC members. All these results were very much appreciated during the World Congress on Rail Research (WCRR) in Sydney from 25 – 28 November 2013, where our representatives Hans-Peter Huber and Robert Herbacek from ÖBB, on behalf of UIC, explained the project results which were more than just simply research, but a practical application in the railway field.

This OFG group will be also involved in the EU (FP7) Capacity for Rail (C4R) WP 3 –dedicated to capacity improvement.