Newly elected RSF chairman Luc Lallemand, CEO of INFRABEL, welcomed European and Asian members to his first meeting. He thanked UIC Director General, Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, for the trust and the responsibility of becoming head of UIC’s biggest technical forum.

Close cooperation amongst the RSF Chair and the Sector Chairmen will be sought in order to confront challenges such as liberalisation, the need to improve performance while reducing costs and create more room for competition. Mr Lallemand indicated that the RSF as part of a global organisation should also focus strongly on worldwide interoperability and more simplicity in the rail system.

• Jean-Pierre Loubinoux thanked both longstanding and new Steering Board members for their commitment and energy that they would be providing for the work on RSF projects and activities. Despite the low opt-in results obtained for project proposals in 2015 he felt positive that the proposals and ideas delivered by the Rail System Forum were good ones. UIC’s aim will be to build a strong technical organisation and to become the technical body for railways worldwide.

• Antonio Berrios Vilallba, newly elected Energy Sector chairman from ADIF, briefly explained that careful management and sound projects in the energy sector could help railways reduce their operating costs.

• Marco Caposciutti, newly elected Rolling Stock Sector chairman from TRENITALIA, stated that the Rolling Stock Sector would be principally working on the reduction of maintenance costs.

• Thomas Joindot, re-elected CCS & Telecom Sector chairman from SNCF, indicated that the Signalling Sector will try to reshape project proposals which have been rejected at the 2015 opt-in by taking into account capacity, performance and cost effectiveness.

• Francisco Cardoso dos Reis, newly elected Track & Structures Sector chairman from REFER, and Pierre-Etienne Gautier, re-elected TTI Sector chairman from SYSTRA, sent their apologies for this meeting and were represented by the Deputy Sector Coordinator, Oleg Nikolaev.

• The RSF is careful to maintain very close cooperation with the Standardisation Platform. Thus SP Chairman, Stefano Guidi, from TRENITALIA, was invited to deliver an update on the state-of-the art of International Railway Standards and Clusters.

Rail System Department Director, Hans Günther Kersten, gave a presentation with an update on activities and events with RSD participation or RSD contribution since the last Steering Board meeting. He further presented a template for a RSF SWOT Analysis (Strengths-Weaknesses-Opportunities-Threats) which have been partly compiled by the RSF Sector Chairmen and partly by the Rail System Department (RSD). This analysis should help to determine the targets in the short, mid and long-term period for each of the five RSF Sectors. Once those targets are identified and implemented, an overall improvement of quality and performance with regard to Rail System Forum projects and activities should be expected.