In 2020, the Colombian Railway Master Plan was published as the strategy for the reactivation and consolidation of the railway operation in the country, and technical regulation was identified as one of the main elements that required actions to achieve this objective, considering that the railway law dates back over a hundred years and that the development of the operational railway infrastructure has had isolated solutions.
Thus, the Colombian government has had the economic support of the British government through the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the reactivation of the railway mode, one of the issues developed being the definition of the roadmap for the development and issuance of technical railway regulation.
Steer as a subcontractor of Cross Rail International led the development of the technical component, carried out the management of the local client (Ministry of Transport and National Planning Department) and had the support of Durán & Osorio for the development of the components that involved institutional analysis and the Colombian standard.
The global structure of Steer enabled and added value to the execution of the project by integrating local knowledge with international experience in the railway sector. In addition, several meetings and workshops were held with different entities of the Colombian government and the main actors of the railway sector in Colombia were consulted.
A detailed analysis of the sector and its current conditions was carried out to build the supporting documents, which included:
- Diagnosis and characterisation of the sector
- Definition of the main objectives for the reactivation and consolidation of the operation of the rail mode.
- Identification of international best practices
- Definition of requirements for technical regulation and information and data management.
- Analysis of the current regulatory framework
As final product Steer delivered the roadmap for the development and implementation of technical rail regulation for Colombia, where a work scheme was proposed considering the institutional framework and the prioritisation of issues to be regulated based on the objectives defined for the national rail system.