Rails Projects: A Rising Need of Contracts to Stay on Tracks

Gilles Mugnier, International affairs director, SNCF, France

The rail projects appear specific however they include generally the same tasks and targets: build and/or operate a rail network with dedicated trains. A rail project involves successive steps to be detailed and coordinated through dedicated contracts between all the entities involved: the authorities, the financers, builders, operators, maintainers and indeed their respective subcontractors and consultants. Any legal advice on that matter deals with a high level of constraints. The challenge for any lawyer involved: to coordinate the bulk of contracts, in order to reflect and to ease the industrial process and indeed to take into account the needs of the clients i.e. the public authority but also the passengers. A complex task for lawyers who need to draft in contracts all industrial requirements, and the different rights and obligations of the stakeholders