The UIC Asset Management Working Group (AMWG) was established two years ago under the umbrella of the Infrastructure Forum, now known as Rail System Forum, to develop and communicate methods and tools to support the consistent application of asset management principles for the benefit of railway infrastructure managers.
The group was started under the impetus of Mr. Anthonie Bauer, Asset Management Director at ProRail, and a core group of railways (ADIF, Infrabel, ProRail, RFF, RFI, Network Rail, SBB and SNCF).

The first phase of this development aimed to establish a common understanding of asset management, together with practical steps to help railway infrastructure managers develop their own approach and methods.
Taking as its starting point the PAS 55 (Publically Available Specification – Asset Management Specification for the optimised management of physical assets), the group introduced the rail sector’s first-ever set of guidelines entitled “Guidelines for the application of asset management in railway infrastructure organisations”.

The document summarises the outcome of the work in the form of a set of asset management guidelines. The guidelines are based on an asset management framework which we believe is generally applicable to railway infrastructure organisations.

A second phase of work is currently underway in which we are using the asset management framework as a reference for assessing asset management processes and systems and for comparing actual performance and costs of the railway infrastructures that we manage. We are already seeing some good practices emerging from this phase of work and we will be publishing the initial results early in 2011.

The document will be sent to all UIC members to give them fresh insight into the implementation of best practices and help them improve their management of assets, develop their business effectively and reduce day-to-day costs.