#107 — ETCS at Age 35: Why So Slow? With one of its original authors, Bogdan Godziejewski

Thirty-five years ago, a small international team sat down to write the first specification for what would become the European Train Control System. Bogdan Godziejewski was one of them. So when he says ETCS rollout has been disappointingly slow, it carries the weight of someone who has followed the system from its very first idea to today.

Bogdan is the immediate past president of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineering (IRSE), Rail Director and Fellow at Mott MacDonald, with more than 40 years of international experience across the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Denmark, the USA and beyond. Between 1992 and 1996 he worked at the European Rail Research Institute on the first ETCS system requirements specification. Few people are better placed to take stock of where ETCS now stands.

In this conversation we cover why deployment has crawled in the big countries while smaller ones forged ahead, what Belgium did differently to fit its entire network in record time, and why a countrywide vision matters more than the technology itself. We get into repeatability, approvals and testing as the real levers of an industrialised rollout. We also turn to Bogdan's IRSE presidency and his Generation Unlimited theme: bringing younger people into the discipline and building bridges between generations.

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Transcript

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Dr. Bogdan, welcome to the show. Yes, welcome and good morning. It's quite an honor to have you on the show. It's actually the third IRSE president that I interviewed for the podcast. I will probably have links to the other conversations in the show notes or at the end of the video. So I wanted to ask you to give our listeners a quick summary of your CV, but I did already a little bit of research beforehand. And I think there were some quite distinct phases in your CV, starting about 40 years ago in Poland. So tell us a bit about this, how the industry looked like when you got into it, when you started off. Yes. So, yeah, it was very much challenging time. Okay. I was working with a research institute in Poland as my first job. And then colleagues were telling me, you know, slowly, there is no need to speed up with your technology, electronics technology, because this is what I studied, just relay interlockings and are fine, you know, relay technology is fine. Look, we have still mechanical interlockings. And you won't see it directly, maybe, but you go there outside and you see a misery, really, this 1980s, very challenging for maintenance teams. In fact, the institute sent me very quickly for a kind of stash outside. So I was spending six months on the rails, watching what the maintenance teams were doing. And I said, no, it can't be like this, it must be changed. It is not really our future. After my study about electronics, what I saw there was really like amazing, amazingly bad. And I said, no, this world must be different. So this was the start, really, which encouraged me to work with railway research and especially railway signaling research and train control. And this is where I started, really. So it was a completely different world. If I go back to Poland now, it's really different. And this is encouraging me that it can be better. Yes. So it's interesting when you say that your older colleagues kind of try to slow you down. Like this, all this modern electronic stuff comes way too early. And that reminds me of the quote, it's always too early until it's too late. That's correct. Probably. Yes. Yes, that's correct. You know, I think that, OK, you have also to understand that I was one of the very few people who are like in their 20s. And my older colleagues who work already like for 20 plus years, they were watching us and saying, oh, something wrong coming here. Yes. And the second phase of your CV, I need to cut this short. We can't possibly cover 40 years of RAD experience in one hour podcast without talking about other things as well. So the second stage that I kind of identified from your profile was when you came to the Netherlands and you worked on ARRI in 1991, where you were involved again in a new technology just emerging as a thought concept. And that was ETCS. Tell us a bit about that one. Oh, yes. So it is almost 35 years now when I went to the Netherlands. So it's a lot of time. And yes, the first years really, I was involved in innovations. And one of the innovations I was involved with was European train control system. So between 1992 and 1996, European Rail Research Institute was responsible for developing first system requirements specifications for ETCS. It was very much a technical job in terms of specifications, functionalities. Looking back now for like many, many years further, I see that we take less attention to operational and organizational and also financial parts. But it was a great job. It was a team of about 15 people led by Mr. Bengt Sterner, a Swedish guy who was a very special one, but was perfect about innovations. And this was, you know, like click. He had clear ideas and we were busy really to put those ideas on paper and challenge those ideas. So it was a great time. And this was where I worked very much internationally. The team was really multinational and everybody brought his own ideas and experiences. So it was fantastic. So if you look back at the last 35 years of ETCS, firstly, the concept development and the development of the system requirements specification that you were involved in, that was later taken over by Unisec. So looking back at the last 35 years, where do you think we stand with ETCS? Are you satisfied? Are you disappointed? Are you something in between? I think obviously I'm disappointed because the pace of deployment is very, very slow. I am pleased looking at Belgium, where I was involved in overseeing the project where the infrastructure is now completed. But I look on the big countries like France or Germany, where it is really a single percent of deployment at the moment. And I think we lost a lot of time. And there could be thousands and thousands of reasons. I always say that the ETCS is a system which is different for every country. Every country has a different starting point. Those ones who have like German LZB won't be fast really deploying ETCS. There are other countries with like no ATP system. And for the safety reasons, they wanted to be like much faster than others. So the starting point was different. And I think also the reason was different. One was because of the obsolescence. The other one was because of safety. And another one really look for capacity. And I think that also it's like about people. I say system is there. It's about people. So people really do it or not or do it better or worse. And I think that it also is about project management qualities. In Belgium, they said, OK, this is the scope. This is the time. This is the budget. We do it. In other countries, there were still discussions about, now is this baseline two or baseline three good enough? Do we need to wait for changes or new systems? So this was really like slowing down the things. So I think, yes, summarizing, I am a little bit disappointed. But I think it still lies with people, not really with the system itself. Yeah. My impression, and you can tell me whether I'm right or wrong there. My impression was that one of the benefits why it went so well in Belgium was that they really had a strategic approach to it. So they didn't see EDCS as a number of projects. They saw it as a countrywide program with several implementation stages. And I think that's a very different approach from other countries where you do one EDCS project in one part of the country. And then a few years later, you do another project in another part of the country, which often has very different project specific requirements. And, yeah, and the outcome then is much more like a patchwork of different EDCS flavors, if you will, compared to countries that have a consistently applied specification. Now, so Belgium comes to mind. I think Norway is another example. Denmark, probably to some extent. Would you agree with that assessment? Or do you think the reasons for the success in Belgium are in a different place? I think that obviously this is a complex issue. It's not a singular reason. In first instance, I think we deal obviously with public procurement, which also influences the way how the things are done. In case of Belgium, it's only one of the two countries where a system was really obliged by law. There are two countries only in the world. One is Belgium. The other one is U.S. with positive train control. And I think this helps a little bit. But you are absolutely right that those ones who implement EDCS need a vision, countrywide vision, because otherwise it is very difficult to keep the story the same. If it is Australia with the states, if it is Germany with federal states, there will be always reasons like funding, way of funding, or people who will delude from the original objective and make it different. So absolutely, I agree with that. Yeah. That's basically the segue already in the third stage of your CV, which is a senior role in McDonald's. It's a big global international consultancy. And I think in that role, you went through a number of programs, including some quite good visibility of EDCS in different countries. You did mention Belgium. I think you had some involvement in EDCS in other countries as well, didn't you? Yes. In fact, I was very lucky to be invited to review various programs, including Danish program back in 2018 and 2020, program in Brisbane, and obviously my own country in the Netherlands. So I'm really involved now in a kind of advisory committee to look how we can do better. Interesting. This gives obviously benchmarking perspective of how the people are implementing EDCS. And you see very often same mistakes or same trends, if I can say so, in doing things. Whereas I think that it's a project, it's a program. If you take it on board, then you have to keep the promise and deliver. And this is, I think, the most important story, not to stop thinking twice. Case of Belgium is very interesting because obviously even if they deliver what they promised in the master plan, they don't stop. It's a digital transformation, which is continuous process and continuous improvement process. They have now STRIVE program, which is like postmaster plan program, which will still improve their systems. So also this, we have to keep in mind that this is not like all in all time to deliver the interlocking, you are done. No, this is a continuous process. Yeah. I mean, what that does, a certain benefit is that you can just implement something faster. If you know from the start that it doesn't have to be perfect, whatever perfect means, but there will be a pre-planned revision of what you have done in the first goal. Once it's an operation and you had a bit of experience and you know what worked well and what could be improved, that's almost like a prototyping approach. That's probably better than, yeah, basically being paralyzed because you try to make it 100% in the first run and nobody knows exactly how that 100% really looks like. Yes. I think that Belgium is again a very special case because they were very much informed client from very early days. I know colleagues there from like 1980s. They were very much involved in doing things themselves. So for example, first electronic interlockings, they buy elements from suppliers and they build the interlockings themselves. Okay. So they were very much technically informed client. And if I look at the train operating companies, NCB, NMS, then also there, they bought installation kits and they installed the onboard EDCs themselves. This gives obviously advantages for later maintenance. Also, I think that in the master plan itself, the division between level one, level one limited supervision where they did things themselves completely and level two, where they cooperate with supplier were different tracks and different ways of doing things. But they have fantastic industrial engineers who really were focused on delivery and this changed the things. Yeah. So I think that this is our distinction maybe with other colleagues from other like infrastructure managers where they are mostly busy with contracts and to less extent with technology itself and innovations and the way how to do it. Okay. There could be perfect infrastructure manager who runs the railways today in a very efficient way but it doesn't mean that this team is prepared for implementing innovations. So very often you see in Belgium, but it's a different story. But like in Denmark or in the Netherlands that there is a special program created around it just to allow the people to implement the system without disturbing what's going on in the brownfield environment. I want to change topics. Obviously with an RSE president, I think you are called now immediate past president if I'm not mistaken. Of course I want to talk about the RSE presidency because many of the listeners will not have a full understanding of what it means and I didn't have either even though I'm a fellow of the organization. So we had a pre-talk where you said it's all up a six-year program that leads into the presidency and out of the presidency. Give us a quick rundown on how these six years look like and what they comprise of. Okay. Yes, first of all, in my case, I was really very encouraged by my own colleagues in the Netherlands because they asked me to go and represent the Netherlands in the council as one of the fellows. It started several years ago and then after a number of years you learn the organization better because you are then proactive in various committees and then at a certain stage you will be selected to go into the presidential chain. And this presidential chain is a long story as you said because today it starts with junior-junior vice president, junior-senior vice president, senior vice president, president, immediate past president and then past president. So indeed, six, seven years involvement and I think it's very good for continuity because obviously all of us are volunteers coming from various parts of the business so we learn each other, we learn to better cooperate with each other and support each other. So this is very important and I think for continuity of organization like membership organization is vital. So that's really the long way to go and I must say I was very encouraged like in Yokohama where I organized ASPEC 2025 last year that I saw several past presidents and not only last two but like last six attending still the ASPEC conference even though some of them are likely retired or less involved but they are still with us and that's very much I like because this is the heritage and this is the continuity of the organization. At the same time, I think that for me I was looking at the demographics and I wanted to have in my ear different elements because my colleagues go very much technically about the team. I was thinking that there is a time to raise awareness that we need really younger people within the organization. So my team was really engaging Generation Unlimited which was really dedicated for younger people. I think that finding a good balance between old and young generation is really very valid for us today. I will get back to your presidential theme in a moment. This continuity thing I believe is something that RSE has been doing for quite a while. I can remember an iconic meeting that I had when I joined the RSE with three RSE presidents the past one the current one and the incoming one and they were all three on a business trip throughout Europe to look at different signaling installations so that was the first time that I was exposed to this continuity between different presidents and I always thought that's a good thing but I don't think that at the time it was a process of six or seven years with all these pre-roids like what's a junior senior vice president I mean that sounds like almost an artificial expansion of this continuity chain. And the other thing that I wanted to ask you in that regard from an RSE perspective this is fantastic having people like for six or seven years in that presidential chain working together with their predecessors with the successors and that's fantastic for the RSE but from your employer's point of view having you involved that heavily into the RSE for such a long period of time that must be very stressful so I know that in the presidential year you're pretty much traveling the world and I wonder whether you got any work done for Mod McDonald during that period at all but if there is a if there are several years before that and even a couple of years after that where you may have a similar amount of involvement how do you square that with your employer if I may ask? Yeah I think the situation is different for every person okay we have presidents who are already like on their own retired or pre-retired there are people working in infrastructure managers or like me in the consultancy now the involvement is not such a significant like during the presidential year it's really much less so it is my voluntary time really to to be there and to participate and obviously you try to limit the burden for the company as much as possible the presidential year is different story you have to travel you have to visit various international sections and it's also up to you how many so there were colleagues who visited almost every section in the world I was selecting some of them thinking that I better spend my time really on presidential lectures and encouraging young people so it was limited but obviously company gave a super and perfect support for me offering the time because time is really this value I needed here to be able to to do my job as a president of IRSC and still I did the projects my normal projects which are hanging very much internationally somewhere between Australia and North America so it was in between but for this you need a team and my team helped me very much I was able to delegate some jobs to others and this also is a learning process in attempts that you learn to do things like a team you are not individual and both at IRSC and with Hilmuth MacDonald we work in teams and that's that's really encouraging that's also what I learned during my MBA study that you can you can try to perform yourself and be the best but it's much more efficient to work in the teams and that's what I like Did you actually count how many countries you visited during your presidential year? I'm just curious Not really but I would say it was less than 10 Ok Ok well that's still that's still a lot given that those countries were all over the world you mentioned Japan for the ESPEC conference which is not directly around the corner from the Netherlands and you were in Australia as well I noticed that yeah and in New Zealand as well I believe so there were a number of countries that are quite a bit away from your from your home yeah Yes that's true I would also include like Singapore Hong Kong US Canada but you know I think that you know if you work internationally you're used to time changes also within ISE we have agreement that for example council meeting are in different time zones so we call it we share the pain and and organize the meetings at various parts of the day yeah yeah yeah I think the ISE has become much better on this during over the years yeah so for for many many years it was very much UK centric and everything happened to Greenwich meantime doesn't matter which time zone that was in other countries and whether they needed to stay up halfway into the night or so but as you said that has gotten much better with much more consideration of people in other time zones which is good talking about your presidential theme or first of all when did you actually know that you would be president in 25 26 and when did you start preparing for your presidential year like thinking about the theme organizing the presidential lectures and so on yeah yes that's that's interesting question it's also be surprised because in fact I should be the president one year later but my colleague from Japan couldn't make it so I had to jump like one year earlier and what he brought with it is the situation was that I was one of the responsible for the aspect in Japan which I didn't really expect to to prepare everything on the remote so this was mainly a task to prepare well and carry on with aspect 2025 and you can imagine that with different cultures different way of thinking and also distance was not so easy also finding sponsors for such a conference on very remote location was very difficult but the Japanese colleagues were really very much helpful and also the colleague who was responsible for the technical organization of the conference as you know him very well Rob Cook was fantastic in the teaming up and working together and I think we were really very successful with organizing that conference also Japanese side I was involved in traveling to Japan since early 90s was changing in terms of openness so we were able to see many many things which you normally want like you know where they are up to with the technology where they are up to with the progress of innovations and yes the let's say the preparatory work really took two years about okay so it is long time and as I said I was taken by surprise so I had just two years to prepare things because normally I was like you know expecting like two three years to do things and then you do okay thinking about presidential team and as I said I watched back the previous presidents what they did how did they perform and it was a lot about technology it was also about people it was also about making institution global one Steve was here from Australia was my best example of yeah bringing the change our global office today was called once headquarter and just to to show that we are very much international he changed the name to global office and this brings different dimension okay it's maybe easy change to do but in fact it was recognizing that we are much much wider busy than only okay on the other hand I think that is important to remember that 50% of our members are UK based and so you have to always find a good balance what you do locally in United Kingdom and what you do elsewhere different places have different expectations and it is ranging from like strategy up to membership and you have to balance and this is done through inviting people to be active in what we do together so that's I think most important story I very much put attention on the teaming and working together because for me this is really making us stronger all together like in the discipline and the same applies really to to like younger professionals and older colleagues yeah if you go to some of our meetings you will see either only young people or very older ones where I try to bring and build the bridges because I think we can learn from each other this is what I do daily with my team in McDonald I can bring some kind of experience they will bring enthusiasm and also curiosity needed really in our discipline these links are very valid to keep the discipline ongoing and developing fast if this conversation makes you wanting to go deeper I run what I believe is the most comprehensive portfolio of online training courses in advanced railway signaling CBTC ETCS high-capacity signaling and more you find them all at my own training platform docfranktraining.com that's docfranktraining.com and everything is right there waiting for you but now back to the show your presidential theme generation unlimited what do you mean by that and how do you came to that how did you come to that theme oh yes yes I was very clear from the beginning that I need to or need I want to have a link with young professionals because this is what I do daily I have opportunity to take people from universities like GUDELF in the Netherlands and help them in their graduation works and very often they stay with me and they stay with the company and they develop themselves after maybe couple of years they might move further because it is not family it's not a marriage it's just helping young professionals developing themselves so some of my colleagues with whom I started like with a graduation job they are now in Canada for example so that's really good to see that this is encouraging me very much that they look much wider than a standard engineer and they try to discover things GED is not my own team it is UNESCO team which was originally meant to to help younger people in their careers and their development so I have somehow I would not say stolen but ran the team from UNESCO and I think this brings also IRSC in a global picture much better yeah well nothing nothing beats a good steal yeah it's a good thing so my understanding or my interpretation is that this is very much about bringing more young people into the industry and helping developing young people to compensate for the increasingly older demographic that we see in the IRSC or maybe in railway so looking back at the year do you think you moved the needle do you think that you instigated some change that will obviously continue over the next few years yeah good question it can be only evaluated after a couple of times not today and tomorrow but what i did were like a series of presidential lectures i think i made a record number of 10 so this is absolutely record in the IRSC history to make so many and you can question if it is quality of quantity but for me it was important really to raise awareness for the younger people as much as possible and what i see today is that in various locations those people started to get together it's not only UK but also United States also the Netherlands also Australia and this is encouraging me because that's what exactly what i wanted i wanted also them to to work internationally i still look for the opportunities to bring them together internationally there are there are other younger professional organizations like young professional railway professionals in UK and i look at them really you know what they do and how they do the things what really young people need today and you know is it not very much different what we wanted like 30 40 years ago just be together have a fun be curious and develop them yourself those elements are very much the same i mentioned about my first days at the institution in Poland and the institute research institute in Poland and you know i see colleagues now telling me that okay they study electronics in Sheffield University and they went to work and they have to deal with mechanical interlockings how it is possible so very much the same story but we move in time and you know i think that railways is a kind of heritage in a sense it depends on the place obviously in Belgium we have this model system but we go like i don't know to Melbourne where we have all the history of railways in one spot and it will take time really to to go up to digital and it's not better or worse it is just the historical development of the railways financial situation of the country and people and you know i think that you try to manage your expectations as a young person and the place you are my German colleagues always told me today that you know if younger colleagues join the organisation they want to work only maybe three days a week they won't be sitting there five days they want to see purpose in their work which is maybe very much different watching the boss you know what the boss is doing no the younger people want to see the purpose in their work and in this sense be active in getting there much more like social environment is for them important so there are changes and obviously technology you know like social networks create let's say very fast exchange of information but it doesn't mean that it will change quickly story like we are doing with the railways so many assets we have in the railways changing the story just takes time and we have to recognise this and this is why I think that smaller countries can move sometimes much more faster than the big ones so nothing wrong with but it's still a desire to be better and like in Singapore to have continuous improvement they call it Kaizen principle I think that's what brings me really to learn every day and discover new things every day because this makes the society better and this makes me also better You just reflected back to your first days in Poland when you started your career and back then from what you said the main recommendation of your older colleagues was don't hurry so much with that new technology you've got time and we have existing legacy systems that work fine would you give the same advice to young people today now that you are in such a senior position or how would your advice look like today to somebody just starting off in the industry I think that the time changed very much from my early days of career today we have technology which is developing much faster at that time it was like obsolescence being a trigger for a new technology new technological approach today with the digitalization is a continuous approach it's not like you know breaking innovations just really involving and still with increased speed so this this is why I would say don't wait just go on and get up to date and also have a vision because what is needed is really a vision for the future where we will be in like 20-30 years all young people who come to organizations like McDonald who work with me I ask the first question is what we'd like to be in 10-15 years from now they have no idea some of them have okay but also what is your vision about where we'd like the discipline to be in 20-30 years and for them it's like you know a horizon okay so now I started say what it will be 5-10 years because it is going so fast that we really can't predict what it will be in 20-25 years from now so not wait don't wait it is much more important really to move with the with the technology and and find it you know like encouraging to to see really what is possible today yeah yeah I think an important um an important skill will be to be able to roll with the punches to um adopt new technology as it comes along I'm just trying to imagine if somebody has asked me or you 20 years ago how the industry would look like in 20 years I don't think either of us would have given a halfway correct answer and so so and with the with the innovation cycle it's getting shorter and shorter and and the the amount of knowledge growing exponentially the the amount of new ideas and so on I think it will get more and more difficult to predict over such a long uh period of time what's what's going to happen so so anything I would tell you today what what Doc Frank's going to do in 2046 is almost certainly entirely wrong yeah so so if I if I have a match rate of like 10% I have probably done a pretty good job so I fully I fully I fully agree with this Frank and uh you know one day I was finding myself sitting in the transport advisory committee of European Commission and there were professors from all over Europe discussing the what Europe will be 2050 from uh energy and transport perspective and I was the only engineer there okay there were sociologists and all other people all professors from famous universities and I asked them why don't you take your students and ask them what they will feel like what they should be their future because it won't be future for you and next time we took the students with us on the meeting and it was completely different discussion because it was very fantastic experience really to see that depending on generation the expectations are completely different yeah so you're absolutely right I think we are now in such a fast developing world that we really can't predict what it will be like 30 50 years from now so those ones who tell me that we will finish deployment in Germany in 2080 or 2070 I can't believe it because I think that we will have it different technologies at that time and different way of running railways likely I was just thinking if somebody would have been asked like 10 years ago where will ETCS be in 2030 they would have said ah ETCS will be wrote out on all the 10 T corridors on the entire European core network well what makes you say that what makes you be so certain oh well because it's in the law it's a it's a requirement by law to have all the corridors fitted by 2030 now looking at today was only four years to go to 2030 it will be very clear that only about half of the corridors will be fitted by 2030 if we're lucky and even by 2050 not all the corridors are expected to be fitted so and that takes back to the to your earlier point of the disappointingly slow rollout pace of ETCS if you can't even rely on something that you put into the law then yeah well how how else should you be able to predict anything in the industry right that has any chance of realistic implementation yes I think we have a European coordinator in Europe about ETCS and he is preparing working plans those plans are changed frequently recognizing that yeah that we are too slow just okay but I think Belgium case is somehow bringing a kind of positive change okay it's the first country really after smaller countries like Luxembourg or even recalling Switzerland to have fully equipped network and I must say that if you ask me five years ago you know would they manage I would say it would be very hard but if you look at the let's say what they did over last three four years of the implementation the speed up really very quickly in average in Europe if you will find the railway introducing ETCS with like 300 kilometers a year it is good okay but Belgians did over the last two years more than thousand and this is because of the way how they do and it was not without sacrification okay so they stop other various infrastructure works which means that today they will have also reworks to do but it's something for something but the goal was accomplished and the goal was really safety yeah so from that perspective they were very very clear about the objective and what they wanted to go let's say and what they wanted to achieve other countries I think still have like a little yeah diluted thinking about what is really the objective and this this makes delivery much more difficult yes I think to to put something like ETCS as priority number one for a country you really have to be convinced that this is the right thing to do that this is the best way of spending your time your effort your money and so on and I think this conviction is really still missing in many countries I was carefully hopeful for Germany over the last few years because of their digital rail Germany concept they came up with where I thought they now seem to have found the formula how ETCS can fit as a cornerstone into a wider digitalization picture that is beneficial for the country but even with that the rollout is still not as fast or as accelerated as you would have hoped for and and I'm wondering what else can be done to to really define ETCS as such a top priority that you even let other infrastructure projects fall back and park by the wayside just in order to get your ETCS program done and the whole country fitted and then you come back to all the other infrastructure work and you may find that it's much easier to implement once you are in the new technology once you have ETCS installed. Yes you know I think I look very much for my neighbour in Germany in terms of implementing ETCS and I have full respect for what's going on there. We can complain that it's very low speed but it's also depending on where you are as an infrastructure manager with the state of your assets and the priorities you would need to take. I think that in a sense the plans were clear like a few years ago. There were enough studies and as you said ETCS is only a small element in the total digitalization of railways. So I think they overlooked this very well and also setting now priorities over the last like two, three years focusing on digital interlockings. Don't forget that Germany has still mechanical interlockings, relay interlockings and that digitalization is also this part of the story about signaling and train control. I think at the moment they have only like 25-30% of electronic interlockings. So the idea really to deploy ETCS wider and especially on corridors is there. I think the German railways put a lot of attention into future railway radio. So ETCS is really a core enabler for Germany really to proceed much faster. So now I think for one month they have like a kind of coordination unit within Ministry of Transport which will try to oversee the deployment. So there are all good steps and I think there are necessary steps really to get to move. They have framework contracts with industry so all is in place. It's a question of people and I think there was a study like three years ago indicating that just industry itself must be preparing for such a big program which I saw some estimates where there was an indication that full industry in Germany won't be able to move faster than 1,000 kilometers a year. So it's also about people. It's not only about technology and the way how you implement it. That's true but it also depends on the process, right? In the last ERTMS work plan there was that term industrialization and I thought that makes a lot of sense and you mentioned it as well with the Belgian approach to get the network fitted and to be so fast. And if you think about industrialization you think about the factory, you think about the production line but you need to meet certain requirements to make this work. If you have a production line in a factory where you change the production line, you modify it every second day, you're not going to get any efficiencies. So what that means and I think Belgian has probably done that is to really to fix and freeze a certain specification, certain requirements for project delivery so that you can get almost into a kind of cookie cutter approach where a project delivery really becomes repeatable. And I think if you were asking anybody from the supply industry how can you get to a thousand kilometres a year, this is exactly what they would tell you. If you reinvent the wheel in every new project there is no chance that you can get there. You need to achieve a certain amount of repeatability to enable a more industrialized approach. Would you agree? Yes, absolutely, but I think it applies really to the whole life cycle, not only to implementing but also approvals. In case of Germany there is a sticking point, the approvals. And this is what Belgians were, let's say, were doing much more clever. The early days of ETCS deployment, they sit together with the safety authority and they discover that this will be a safety blocking point. So they agreed that they will approve through safety authority generic application and that every line deployment will be only looking for delta. This speed up, let's say, the whole process drastically. Similar story I observed in Denmark where safety authority found themselves like, hey, what is this now? What shall we do as a safety authority? So they prepared their own special plan to, let's say, approve ETCS. I think this part is still missing in Germany and needs really attention. This will speed up quickly, let's say, the process of not only like physical implementation but also approval and getting into operation. So absolutely yes, but it needs a little bit wider consideration than the only like industrialization in terms of production. It is only also about deployment, it's also about approvals. Then you get there. A question out of personal interest, how important do you think is testing and especially national coordination of testing between different projects. Is that something that you have observed in Belgium that you would think was one of their strengths? I think there is obviously a common interoperability lab. There are a few suppliers active there. My best example is my own country, the Netherlands, where we have like a range center where we try to eliminate as much as possible physical testing. So in the range center we have most of the lines where it is going to be implemented digitalized. So supplier can call the range center on our network. This speeds up really fantastic the way of testing and also take away the burden of making slots for testing on the real lines. So I think that this is also the future of testing to make it much more digital, if I can say so. Also, if you look a little bit further, because that's what I observe also in those countries who already have ETCS, it's also about how do you deal with maintenance. ETCS and also like CBTC projects, they offer a new story, predictive maintenance. You can see it in countries like Singapore, where they already have very much move for data analytics and predictive maintenance and give a new dimension for how we deal with the digital systems. I think that this element of the story of European train control system is still very much forgotten in many countries and should be taken on board as quickly as possible, just to encompass the whole life cycle of the system and use really what is possible today. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm conscious of your time. We almost run out of this hour and I told you before. You promised one hour. Let's fly in no time. I wanted to give you some space to talk about one or two memorable events from your presidential year and I know it's a difficult question because there are probably so many that if you talk about one you automatically neglect a number of others. Is there anything where you can look back in that presidential year where you think that was particularly memorable or surprising to you, you didn't expect it or so, what would it be if you just pick one? Yeah, that's a very difficult question. I must say during the year in any place where I was starting from Switzerland via United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand and Australia and obviously the Netherlands, UK. Yeah, I was really encouraged by openness and open door. This brings me a kind of warm feeling for the institution because we are in various places in the world. We are relatively small, like on distance, we have our mindsets, we have our way of thinking but a kind of kindness and warm reception was everywhere. There was no exception on this. This brings me also hope let's say that those colleagues who like receive me in the various countries will look at the institution and the needs let's say to modernise, okay, in the common. It's not like on a single place. It's like community. We share pain and we share successes and we would like to move forward. I think this is something that I would like to mention also that we have developed within council a kind of strategy 2030 and we would like to see IRSC really developing faster and much more as a community of individuals but also of sections and being stronger, okay. One of the elements during the year was also work of my colleagues towards the Royal Charter in UK. This brings also different dimension for the institution in UK but also worldwide and works which we do in other places on licensing or competency assessment are also like encouraging. I hope that we can be able let's say to work together with NTC in Australia on this. For ETCS could be like a linking pin let's say through various competency assessment schemes in various states in Australia just to bring it under one roof for our particular discipline. I hope that this will help also places like in Australia to digitalise faster and to have common mindset and also sharing people because the big issue today we have is really lack of people and experience people so if we can standardise a little bit those processes it will help us to be better as a sector. That was a very presidential answer. You were asked to name one specific example and you spent the entire word in your response. If somebody approached you next week and said Bogdan you have the unique opportunity to be the first IRSE president who can go for a second year in April 2027 would you say yes? No because I think it's enough for a year. The continuity is obviously an issue but I prefer to give the chances to others to be better than me and they will have my full support in whatever they do. Because I think it is not individual story, it's a teamwork as I said and so you will always find the right moment of doing things. Yes so you had your one year on the top and that should be enough and I should have the same opportunity as well. Bogdan, thank you very much for that talk. I found it very inspiring and I hope that our listeners will feel the same. I'm really glad that I got you on the show. Thank you very much for your time and all the best for your next one nearly two years of past presidency. Thank you. Yes, thank you very much Frank. Thanks, bye bye. Yes, bye. Hi, it's Dr. Frank again. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. If you like the content, then the best way you make sure that you don't miss out on any of the future episodes, just subscribe to the channel. By doing so, you also get access to all the previous episodes, which I'm pretty sure there will be many that are of interest to you. Another thing that you can do to help not just your own environment, but the entire industry is to share this episode with friends and co-workers because it helps more people in our industry to get educated and an educated rail signaling industry is a better industry. With that said, thank you very much. Hope to see you again soon and bye for now.