A couple of severe incidents occurred on the Polish railway network in 2011 and 2012. With the aim of improving safety, UIC Director General, Mr Loubinoux and CEO of Polish State Railways (PKP), Dr Karnowski decided to organise a seminar on railway safety issues with particular focus on human factors and safety management systems. This seminar was supported by the UIC Safety Platform and namely the Human Factor Working Group and System Safety Management Group.
The event was jointly organised by PKP & UIC and took place on November 21 2012 at PKP SA Headquarters in Warsaw. The main objective of this seminar was to improve the railway safety approach of PKP to benchmark the Organisational and Human Factors safety measures that were taken in some European countries to prevent severe accidents.
The seminar brought together senior European experts in railway safety including the top management of Polish Railways led by PKP SA CEO Dr Jakub Karnowski. The governmental authority representatives – among others – were represented by Dr Andrzej Massel, Vice Minister for Transport, and Dr Jakub Majewski, Vice President of the Office of Rail Transport.
For UIC’s part, Mr Jean-Pierre Loubinoux – Director General of UIC HQ, representatives of the Safety Platform from Austria, Belgium, Germany, France and Switzerland gave speeches, as well as UIC Safety Unit staff: Mr Peter Gerhardt – Head of Unit, and Virginie Papillault – Expert on human factors in safety. The seminar was moderated by Mr Marcin Zaremba –Deputy Director of Market Research Department at PKP SA and Mr Jerzy Wisniewski – Director of the UIC Fundamental Values Department.
Having taken into consideration that the issues of railway safety and security are of ultimate significance for PKP management, UIC declared it would deploy further efforts in order to support PKP in its safety improvement undertakings as a follow-up to the seminar. The availability of UIC’s high-level experts and UIC’s close relationship with several international organisations and institutions should be helpful in jointly obtaining the expected results.
UIC Director General took this opportunity to greet all the Polish railway people in reference to their Railwaymen Day celebrated on 25 November.
