Tuesday 30 June 2020

UIC Safety Platform held remotely on 25 June 2020

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Mr. Rolf Härdi, Vorstandsressort Digitalisierung & Technik Strategie, Innovation & neue Technologien at DB AG and also UIC Safety Platform Chairman welcomed over 30 participants and in particular new members: Mr. Tobias Lindberg, Head of Traffic Safety at Trafikverket and Mr. Guillaume Foeillet, Safety Project manager at SNCF.

Mr. Jerzy Wisniewski, Director of the UIC Fundamental Values Department gave a general overview on UIC’s work during lock-down and after.
From 16 March UIC staff members have been working remotely and efficiently on all their projects and have served UIC members as best as possible.
He informed the meeting that a contingency plan of UIC and more information will be presented to UIC Members at the Statutory meetings to be held remotely on 29 and 30 June 2020. He said that several dozen meetings and conferences were cancelled, postponed but many were held remotely and successfully.

The Covid-19 issue was also on the agenda.
Mr. Marc Guigon, Director Passenger Dept. of UIC gave an “Introduction to the UIC Covid-19 Task Force work and actions regarding Covid-19.”
https://uic.org/covid-19/:

Mr. Allan Spence, Head of Corporate Passenger & Public Safety at Network Rail presented “The unintended safety consequences of Covid-19 precautions”
He concentrated his presentation on the impacts (and adverse impacts) of Covid-19 on the operation in GB and lessons learned.
He also stressed that it has been the subject of conversation N°1 everywhere: on TV, in the media, in private conversations or between colleagues. As a result, they have seen a certain number of distraction cases at work.

Then we had a certain number of presentations of safety events or safety related information

Mr. Masayoshi Toyohara, East Japan Railway Company who despite the late schedule in Japan presented the countermeasures by EJR related to Covid-19 situation and safety countermeasures in stations, on platforms, at LCs in Japan.
Mr. Enrico Paoletti, Mercitalia Rail presented the follow up of Viareggio trial after the second degree of judgement.
Mr. Guillaume Foeillet, SNCF, on behalf of Frédéric Hénon reported on an accident that occurred on 22 December 2019 in La Millesse in France.
Dr. Ann Mills, RSSB presented the new version of the industry’s shared strategy, Leading Health and Safety on Britain’s Railway was published 2 April 2020.
The updated strategy:

Mr. Bart Hoogcarspel, ProRail presented the “Level crossing accident that occurred at Hooghalen on 22 May 2020”
The collision happened between a train and a tractor carrying sand at a private crossing. Unfortunately, the train driver died in the collision.
For more information you can also watch the video used during ILCAD 2020 web-conference by Mrs. Anne Zwiers, ProRail Director level crossing and speaker at the conference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hp6UujtcGVQ&feature=youtu.be
He also shared figures on SPADs and construction site accidents.

The afternoon session was dedicated to a short information on the main outcomes of each Safety Platform Working Group

For more information on safety activities at UIC: https://uic.org/safety/

a) SSMG, more info: https://uic.org/safety/system-safety/

As SSMG has been a mixed UIC/CER group from the very beginning, it is supported by Isabelle Fonverne (UIC) and Enno Wiebe (CER)
Since the ERA programme of work is very wide-ranging and is time-critical given the need to comply with the Commission’s timescales for implementing the 4th Railway Package technical pillar aspects, this group meets once a month (except summer break).
JF Meunier reported on the past meetings and summarised current work. He finally presented the work-programme for 2020 and 2021: ongoing processes about the 4th railway package (technical pillar), implementation and preparation.

He finally reported that he would retire from the end of June 2020 and that it was his last UIC meeting.
He summarised his 40-year-carrier at SNCF with special missions for UIC and CER.
His latest position has been International Safety Director- CER Risk Assessment Expert – SSMG Chair at the Interoperability and Standardisation Department of SNCF

Department “Technologies, Innovation and Group Projects”:

  • Responsible for the negotiation, monitoring and internal coordination of safety regulatory aspects for the 4th Railway Package (technical pillar): Safety Directive, ERA Regulation, Regulations, Delegated Acts and related Implementing Acts.
  • Chairman of the System Safety Management Group / CER Support Group (UIC / CER)
  • Member of the UIC Safety Platform
  • CER Risk Assessment Expert within the framework of the Joint Network Secretariat (ERA)

Rolf Härdi, UIC Safety Platform Chairman mentioned Jean-François’ very rich and impressive railway career at SNCF.
On behalf of all UIC Safety Platform members he thanked him very warmly for his indefectible support to the UIC Safety Platform and more precisely SSMG works.
He would have preferred to give him a trophy in a physical meeting but the situation being exceptional he presented it to him online.

Jean-François Meunier reported that Mr. Achim Vollmuth, SSMG Vice-Chair accepted to chair the group. Mr. François Binet, SNCF took over the Vice-Chair. Mr. François Binet will also replace Mr. Frédéric Hénon as the SNCF representative in SSMG.
Mr. François Binet’s biography: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fran%C3%A7ois-binet-a9b4aa24/

Mr. Achim Vollmuth is Senior Referent - Safety Management Dept., DB Holding
He started with an apprenticeship at DB in September 1992 (Industrial Mechanic)

  • Then he has been working at different positions:
    • Train companion service,
    • Over 10 years at the Quality Management dept.
    • Dual studies in International Management at University of applied sciences,
    • Data Manager (electronic operational data recording),
    • From 2016 until today he has been working in the Safety Management dept.
  • From 2018 to June 2020 he has been Vice-Chair of SSMG then from 1 July 2020 he will take over the Chairmanship of SSMG.

b) Occupational Health and Safety Group (OHSG) chaired by Mrs. Maria Hedqvist, Rule Book Manager at Trafikverket.
She has been involved for 10 years in UIC work. She reported on OHSG works and the future work-programme. She reported that the work of the road/rail vehicles taskforce are about to be published.
More info https://uic.org/safety/occupational-health-safety/

c) Human Factors Working Group chaired by Mr. Bernard Penners, Infrabel informed on the following:

  • Safety Culture: Next step with the model (comparison with ERA model, dissemination possibilities of the UIC model)
  • Automation: proposal for collaboration with ERA
  • Other actual work of the HFWG (fatigue + best practice of HF integration)
  • Future IRS about emergency management
    More info https://uic.org/safety/human-factors/

d) Safety correspondents/data base (Bart Hoogcarspel, ProRail)
He reported on a number of SPADs and construction sites accidents. He also informed that UIC welcomed Ukraine as new member in the UIC Safety database. Some members stressed the again the importance of the UIC safety data base to have our own data to analyse them to find improvements.
More info https://uic.org/safety/safety-database/

e) IRSN (Doris Horvath, CFL) informed on 2019/2020 activities:

  • Exchanges on Incidents/Accidents and prevention of SPAD
  • Exchanges on good practices
  • Evolution of safety culture in railways (SNCF, SNCB, CFL, ..)
  • ILCAD –Level Crossing Accidents Prevention (JR Group)
  • Simplification of rules (CFF, SNCF, Trenitalia, …)
  • Safety Performance Metric Group (RSSB)
  • Falls from platforms
  • Benchmarking / Surveys for comparing safety practices in different companies
  • VR in railways
  • Covid-19 related issues (infrastructure and operational issues)

More info https://uic.org/safety/international-rail-safety-network/

f) ELCF (A Spence, Network Rail) gave a debrief on ELCF’s activities

  • Last meetings:
  • 21 November 2019 in Rome https://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/670/#filter=.mot-122
  • 12 March 2020: ProRail, Utrecht was cancelled because of Covid-19 and replaced by a remote meeting.
  • Save the date: physical meeting if possible, on 19-20 November 2020 in Porto (or remotely).

More info https://uic.org/safety/safety-at-level-crossings/

g) ILCAD (I Fonverne, UIC) shared the following information

  • ILCAD 2020 launch conference on 11 June 2020 hosted by Network Rail in York cancelled and postponed to 10 June 2021 in York.
  • ILCAD 2020 campaign maintained in a lighter format: questionnaire with statistics, press release, poster, social media, web-conference in English on 11 June 2020; www.ilcad.org ;

Marie-Hélène Bonneau, Head of Security Unit of UIC reminded the UIC coordinated project “RESTRAIL” http://restrail.eu/ The aim of the RESTRAIL (REduction of

Suicides and Trespasses on RAILway property) project is to reduce:

  • The occurrence of suicides and trespass on railway property and
  • The service disruption and other consequences these events cause
    It ran from 2011 to 2014. She reminded that level crossings were out of the scope of this project.
    She then presented SAFER LC https://safer-lc.eu/ an EU project again coordinated for four years by UIC that is dealing with level crossing safety.
    She reported on the final report and the toolbox available on internet: https://toolbox.safer-lc.eu/user/login?destination=/node/18.
    She also mentioned the final and very successful international conference that took place online instead of physically in Paris on 22 April 2020:
    read more here https://uic.org/com/uic-e-news/689
    She stressed that Safety at LC is a key issue, and UIC will continue maintaining and feeding the toolbox. UIC will organise other international workshops in the future as for the RESTRAIL project for which the toolbox is still alive and fed with new ideas.

Save the dates of the Safety Platform calendar 2020

  • Steering Group meeting: 16 November 2020 from 13:00 to 17:00 (TBD) at UIC HQ followed by
  • Plenary meeting/workshop: 17 November 2020 09:00- 17:00 at UIC HQ

For further information please contact Isabelle Fonverne, Senior Safety Advisor:

fonverne at uic.org

2 Votes

Average rating: 5 / 5

Jean-François Meunier, SNCF, SSMG Chair until 30 June 2020
Achim Vollmuth, Senior Referent - Safety Management Dept. DB Holding SSMG Vice Chair until 30 June 2020, Chair from 1 July 2020
François Binet, Deputy Director of the Interoperability Unit in the field of operations at SNCF & SSMG Vice Chair from 1 July 2020