At the invitation of East Japan Railways (JRE), a very active company in the important topic of standardising the railway system of today and tomorrow, the Core Group met in Tokyo on 1 November on the fringes of WCRR.
The meeting was chaired by Standardisation Platform chairman Laurent Schmitt (SNCF) and the assembled delegates were welcomed by Shunzo Miyake JR East director of International Affairs, Standardisation Strategies & Promotion Division and senior representatives of JRE and RTRI the Japan railways technology and research institute.
The meeting reviewed the current work programme, presented by Head of Standardisation Programming, Célia Levy and the progress that has been made with the principle priority of migration of UIC leaflets to IRSs and the objective to have completed that by the end of 2022.
In addition to remarking on the success of the plenary meeting and the standardisation conference that had taken place in Paris on 17th September, the meeting also identified the importance of evolving the UIC’s work in the standardisation field and noted that, based on experience to date with the current processes, there will be a further iteration of the ‘Standardisation Guidelines’ to be published in the second half of 2020.
It is important to ensure that those colleagues responsible for the preparation of the IRS that UIC publish are doing so against a background of consistency and efficiency. The former M1 document dealt with that for the erstwhile leaflets. The new M2 document is designed to be the fulcrum for the preparation of the IRSs. The Core Group approved the draft M2, subject to a couple of minor adjustments, and this will be presented to the General Assembly on 11th December for ratification.
The Core group was delighted to be able to welcome colleagues from MTR in Hong Kong and from the Land Transport Authority in Singapore who shared with the meeting the work they are doing in the standardisation field. It was evident that for them cybersecurity and energy solutions are important topics and they were pleased to know that this is just as important to UIC and its members.
The dates for the meetings of the Standardisation Platform Core group for 2020 (January, April and November) were complemented by the ratification by the meeting of the date of 30 September in Paris which will be the date for the 2020 plenary meeting and international conference.
On behalf of the UIC team, Simon Fletcher (CSO) thanked the Japanese hosts for their very warm welcome and encouraged the visiting colleagues from Hong Kong and Singapore to remain in contact with UIC in order to maximise future opportunities.
