The ARA’s Rail Industry Executive Committee (RIEC) held its third quarter meeting in Sydney this week.  

RIEC discussed new governance arrangements and a revised Terms of Reference for RIEC to improve representation and engagement of supplier members, which will come into effect on 1 November.  

The ARA will be establishing a large supplier reference committee and a small supplier reference committee which will elect representatives for RIEC’s next two-year term. The ARA would like to thank RIEC current members for their strategic oversight and contributions as their nomination term comes to end on Thursday 31 October. More details will be circulated to ARA supply chain members in the coming weeks.  

RIEC reviewed and discussed 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. RIEC also received a presentation from Diversity Partners regarding findings and proposed recommendations from the recent Progressing Gender Equality report and an update from GHD on the Harmonisation of Standards Research Report.  

RIEC noted the development of the ARA member capability directory and the recent webinar on pitching to support suppliers as they prepare for profiling their capabilities in the upcoming Supplier Spotlight series in response to the Meet the Buyer webinars. There was also an update on the InnoTrans trade mission in September and AusRAIL later in November. 

RIEC also discussed next steps following the release of The Critical Path to Decarbonise Australia’s Rail Rollingstock report and an update on the First Nations Engagement project to support social procurement.