DACcord

Overview

The project DACcord provides with management competencies the support to the EU-Rail for the continuation of the professional management of the activities of the European DAC Delivery Programme (EDDP). The EDDP, enabled by the EU-Rail gathers European Rail Freight Sector and manufacturers for the Europe-wide introduction of a Digital Automatic Coupler.

DACcord describes in detail the required migration planning activities, leading to an industrial migration roadmap, as the EDDP focuses on the preparation of DAC migration and deployment from 2023 onwards. DACcord will work closely with EDDP members and stakeholders to set up the overall task list in the actions defined by the EDDP. As alignment on the DAC/EDDP objectives throughout Europe is key to achieve consensus on objectives and specially to unlock the necessary funding for such a sector-wide transformation. DACcord establishes a mechanism for collecting and reporting the positions in the European stakeholder landscape to support the EU-Rail in providing recommended measures to the EDDP stakeholder management team.

To make DAC implementation economically possible, the project will further provide a draft concept on requirements for the DAC deployment funding mechanisms and potential options to fulfil them, to prepare the way for DAC deployment management entities in Europe. To align the different activities shaping the architectural and procedural DAC-related European Railway System (project FP5-TRANS4RM-R in the EU-Rail Flagship Area 5, the EU-Rail System Pillar (task 4) and EDDP), DACcord will support the EU-Rail in the cross-coordination and interfacing of the three entities and in the management and administration of its different decision-making bodies.

Objectives

Objective 1: Enable an effective and coordinated European‐wide DAC roll‐out

• Provide operative management of EDDP supporting the EU-Rail and EDDP board(s) decisions
• Continuous risk management and definition of joint mitigation measures
• Monitor maturity checkpoint and progress of FP5 FDFTO DAC technology packages/components
• Ensure pipelining of information and feedback between EDDP, System Pillar, Innovation Pillar/FP5 and relevant national DAC projects (e. g. DAC4EU)
• Ensure pipelining of information and feedback with linked institutions (e. g. ERA)

Objective 2: Setting up an actionable migration and implementation plan

• Set-up an EDDP DAC migration roadmap towards deployment (incl. institutional setting)
• Define gaps, tasks, and required resources for delivery
• Define milestones, gates (criteria) and deliverables in a joint manner: with relevant stakeholders

Objective 3: Forging allies for a European industrial and modal shift success story

• Achieve strong sector & political stakeholder support by DAC story-building
• Strong interaction and active communication with stakeholders and institutional environment by building-up and executing a cross-sectoral/country stakeholder management plan and related activities
• Provide draft concepts for funding/financing mechanisms for alignment with European institutions, Member States and sector stakeholders
• Encompassing and aligned preparation of the relevant technical, financial and organisational legal framework for DAC rollout