The ARA’s Rail Infrastructure Contractors Executive Committee (RICEC) held its third quarter meeting in Sydney this week.  

At the meeting, members reviewed an Australian first proposal, received a presentation from Diversity Partners regarding findings and proposed recommendations from the recent Progressing Gender Equality report and received an update from GHD on the Harmonisation of Standards Research Report project.  

RICEC progressed key strategic initiatives such as the next steps in the proposed establishment of a national pre-qualifications scheme, systems integration discussion paper and roundtable with delivery authorities and supporting micro-credentials, as well as the assessment of networks management plan processes during procurement.  

RICEC also discussed Infrastructure Australia’s embodied carbon projections and recommendations in their recently released report, as well as the ARA’s draft policy brief on the review of the Rail Safety National Law and National Rail Action Plan implementation mechanism and next steps. 

RICEC also visited Trains for Tomorrow STAR Phase 2 signalling to support the uplift of capacity, where 50 per cent of the project has been completed to date, with the project to be commissioned by end of 2024. Several engineering safety solutions have been applied to this project.