2010 Rail Planning Conference – Final Agenda

Tuesday, October 5th (5:00 PM to 11:00 PM)

5:00 PM to 6:30 PM – Registration – The entire Rail Planning Conference and Workshop will be held at the Nassau Inn.  The registration table will be located adjacent to the Palmer Room.

6:30 PM to 7:30 PM – Cocktail Reception – In the Lounge (second floor lobby) near the Palmer Room.

7:30 PM to 9:30 PM – Welcome Dinner – To be served in the Palmer Room.  Dr. Christian Kuhn, the Chief Operating Officer of DB Schenker Rail, will make a presentation on the challenges faced in managing freight operations in Europe.

9:30 PM to 11:00 PM – Hospitality Suite – In the Lounge (second floor lobby)

Wednesday, October 6th (8:00 AM to 5:00 PM)

8:00 AM to 9:00 AM – Breakfast Buffet – To be served in the Prince William Ballroom.

9:00 AM to 10:00 AM – Session Opening – Opening remarks by Oliver Wyman – All Conference and Workshop sessions will be held in the Prince William Ballroom.

• Rodney Case (Associate Partner, Oliver Wyman) – “Management by Design” – Rod will present an introduction to the conference theme of how service design practices, and the rapid implementation of these new designs, navigated the railways through the depths of the recent recession and positioned them for greater growth and profitability.
• Carl Van Dyke (Partner, Oliver Wyman) – “The State of Service Design and Operational Rail Planning Tools” – Carl will outline emerging trends in rail planning software tools. He will also discuss the changing nature of planning, the need to adapt to a new rail environment, and a brief overview of where Oliver Wyman is headed in rail planning systems.

10:00 AM to 12:15 PM – Management by Design (Part I) – “Management by Design” Presentations by four railroads on the methods and processes used in planning during the unprecedented freight decline of 2008 and 2009.  There will be a 15 minute coffee break during the Management by Design session.

• Don Wetmore (Union Pacific Railroad) – Presentation on the Union Pacific Crew Planning Process
• Olin Dirks (Union Pacific Railroad) – Presentation on the Union Pacific Locomotive Planning Process
• Ron Griffith (BNSF) – Challenges associated with plan design associated with the need to contract or expand capacity due to periods of declining or rising traffic volumes
• Dewey Smith (Norfolk Southern)
• Alexander Below (DB Schenker Rail) – Presentation on the Netzwerkbahn project, which is a current DB Schenker Rail project for optimizing the planning of the freight railway

12:15 PM to 1:15 PM – Luncheon – To be served in the Senior Room.

1:15 PM to 2:00 PM – Technical Innovation in Rail Operations – Assan Dossayev, the Chief Information Officer of Kazakhstan Temir Zholy (KTZ), will give a presentation on “Emerging Technology in Locomotive and Wagon Control.”

2:00 PM to 3:30 PM – The Application and Future of Software Planning Tools (Part I) – The Oliver Wyman Development staff will lead presentations and demos on some of the latest features of MultiRail Enterprise Edition, such as browser-based (Web) reports, and provide insight into the development of the next generation of MultiRail Enterprise Edition.  Related software tools, including the Hazardous Material Route Planner and the Traffic Flow Analyzer (TFA) will also be presented.

• Introduction to the Hazmat Project – David Friedman.  A description of the business case (government regulations, etc.) that provided the impetus for the project.  A demo will be given of the alternate routing, compliance report, multi-color mapping and other features.  A summary of potential extensions will also be presented.
• Traffic Flow Analyzer (TFA) – Francis Julian and Dave Hunt.  A review of the principals and goals of the traffic flow analyzer will be given.  The TFA will be demonstrated, featuring the browser-based GUI.  After the demo, there will be a discussion on the business possibilities for this technology.
• MultiRail Web Reports – Francis Julian.  A full demonstration of the MultiRail browser-based (Web) reports will be given.
• The Next Generation of MultiRail – Sarojini Davis and Yury Gorbunov.  Architectural and usability goals of the next generation of MultiRail Enterprise Edition will be discussed.  The presenters will demonstrate a number of items being developed for the new MultiRail, including the block and train manager, and the new GUI.

3:30 PM to 3:45 PM – Refreshment Break

3:45 PM to 4:15 PM – Rail Network Computer Simulation – Joseph Black, Manager of Rail Operations for Systra USA, will give a presentation and demonstration of network simulation technology.

4:15 PM to 5:00 PM – The Application and Future of Software Planning Tools (Part II) – The Oliver Wyman Development team will discuss and demonstrate a new MultiRail feature, resource estimation, the updated interface for the Locomotive Optimization Manager and the new Commercial Traffic Forecasting module (CTF).

• Resource Estimation – Yury Gorbunov. We will discuss, via a demonstration and slides, the concept of “quick and dirty” estimation schemes for estimating the number of wagons, crews and locomotives needed for the operating plan.
• Locomotive Model Interface – Christian Sakowitz and Marc Meketon. A demonstration of the new locomotive model user interface.
• Traffic Forecasting – Marc Meketon. A unified view of traffic forecasting, based on historical movement processing (developed for TFR and KTZ), rule-based editing, orders modification, and orders balancing will be presented.

7:00 PM to 9:30 PM – Conference Dinner – Dinner will be served in the Palmer Room at the Nassau Inn.

Thursday, October 7th (8:00 AM to 3:30 PM)

8:00 AM to 9:00 AM – Breakfast Buffet – To be served in the Prince William Ballroom.

9:00 AM to 9:30 AM – The View from Europe – A Partner and the head of Oliver Wyman’s European Surface Transportation Practice, Joris D’Incà will make a presentation highlighting the state of the European rail industry. Prince William Ballroom.

9:30 AM to 11:15 AM – Management by Design (Part II) – We continue our discussions on the theme of “Management by Design” by looking at how professional Rail Planners will be rising to the challenge of managing amidst the upcoming fundamental changes to the industry.  Presentations will be made by three railroads.  There will be a 15 minute coffee break during the Management by Design session.

• Jim Ralph and Dharma Acharya (CSX) – Current and future challenges affecting rail operations planning and an overview of tools used to better manage CSX’s network, assets and resources.
• Ray Dai (Canadian Pacific) – “Rail Planning for the Future” – An overview of how planning at CP has adapted to the changes we have seen in the past two years, and the role of the planner and tools in boosting future productivity.
• Emma Jeppsson (Green Cargo) – Overview of Green Cargo’s capacity booking system and how MultiRail is used to adopt the monthly plan.

11:15 AM to 11:45 AM – Positive Train Control - Oliver Wyman has extensive experience in the area of Positive Train Control (PTC) and is acknowledged for its report on “The Assessment of the Commercial Benefits of Positive Train Control” released by the AAR in April of this year.  Oliver Wyman’s Rodney Case, an Associate Partner in the Surface Transportation Practice, will be making a presentation on “The Unfunded Mandate: Positive Train Control”

11:45 AM to 1:00 PM – Luncheon – Lunch will be served in the Senior Room.

1:00 PM to 2:00 PM – The Application and Future of Software Planning Tools (Part III) – The Oliver Wyman Development team will discuss and demonstrate features added to MultiRail over the past two years and discuss the MultiRail feature for resource estimation and the new “tonnage train” tools.

• MultiRail – Tonnage Trains and Trip Planning – David Lehlbach. David will explain the concept of tonnage trains.  Separation of train departures from train routes, train-run-frequency, etc. will be discussed.  The trip plan that auto-generates trains will be discussed.
• New features in MultiRail Enterprise Edition – David Lehlbach. A summary and short demo will be given of the new features added to MultiRail for a variety of clients over the last two years.  The demo will include an update on the Stringline Manager.
• MultiRail – Capacitation and Volume Estimation – Marc Meketon. The ability to capacitate corridors, trains and train-blocks will be examined.  The new corridor capacity screens will be displayed.  Capacitated volume estimation, along with train priority, will be discussed and demonstrated.

2:00 PM to 3:15 PM – Panel Discussion – Passenger Trains on Freight Railroads –  Our panel will offer the viewpoints of freight railroads, who wish to ensure that capacity and service levels are not affected by passenger trains, and by those advocating a more integrated mix of high-speed trains and freight trains on shared network resources.

• Fred Frailey (Trains Magazine) – moderator
• Henry Posner (Rail Development Corporation) – Panelist
• Gönke Kraft (DB Schenker Rail) – Panelist

3:15 PM to 3:30 PM – Closing Remarks – Rodney Case (Associate Partner, Oliver Wyman)

Registration Information

The conference will be held at the Nassau Inn in downtown Princeton New Jersey.  You can register for the conference by using the on-line registration form or by contacting Bonnie Painter at Oliver Wyman at +1 609-419-9800 or via e-mail at bonnie.painter@oliverwyman.com.

The registration fee for the full conference is USD $795, which can be paid upon arrival at the workshop & conference. The registration fee includes two nights at the Nassau Inn, all meals and conference events. If you wish to pre-pay for the conference, please contact Bonnie Painter.

If you are attending the conference, but only spending one night in the hotel, the registration fee is USD $635, which includes meals and access to all conference events. If you wish to attend, but will not be staying at the Nassau Inn, the conference fee is USD $500, which also will include the meals and all conference events.

Updated agendas will be posted here as the program is further refined and a final agenda will be posted approximately two weeks prior to the start of the conference.

Travel and Nassau Inn Information

Driving directions and a map for the Nassau Inn are available on the Internet at http://www.nassauinn.com. You can also take a New Jersey Transit train to the Princeton Junction station, where taxis are available for the short ride to downtown Princeton. Train schedules can be found at http://www.njtransit.com.

Nassau Inn Princeton

Ten Palmer Square
Princeton, NJ 08542
USA
Phone: +1 609-921-7500
Fax: +1 609-921-9004