Colas Rail continues to be the French leader in the rail-track laying business. Its leading role in this business is partly due to its unique ability to deliver turnkey products to its clients. The company has been active in all the spheres of railway business, from building up to the maintenance of the railway system. Colas Rail's activities extend to nearly everything related to the railway industry: engineering, building, cargo, metallurgy, and so on. It also installs power transformers and catenaries by itself.
The company is capable of integrating the whole project, and its clients can therefore rely on it to outsource their investments and maintenance costs. This ability, as well as Colas Rail's technological know-how and innovation, makes it likely to benefit from the rail-track management liberalization that began with railway cargo in 2005. This trend will continue since the European Commission is pushing for liberalization of most of the state monopolies.
However, the rail-track laying market is still a very special market.It is deeply imperfect with huge government power interventionism and protectionism. In some countries, foreign companies constantly face discrimination.
[...] TURNKEY PRODUCTS: THE FUTURE VII- Colas Rail's environment Although all the PESTEL elements play a role in the Colas Rail's environment, its main drivers are the political, economical and technological factors. The political factor stems from the fact that railtrack management companies, in most of the countries, are state-owned. Furthermore, given the huge amount of investments needed in such an industry, investment decisions are taken by political management, in a long term view and as part of their country management plan. [...]
[...] For instance, when building a recent rail-track, Colas Rail found that the stones they were extracting from a hill it was excavating to install the rail-track was 8 an ideal ingredient for "ballast" ithad to put somewhere else on the project. If Colas Rail was only working on the project without managing it, it couldn't have decided or obtained the authorization to use or have the firm in charge of it use the stones found. The firm thus found an efficient way to do as it wouldn't be necessary to buy "ballast" somewhere else. [...]
[...] When entering a new market, Colas conducts a first exploration project. If the targeted market is expected to keep growing, Colas Rail creates a subsidiary. The new entity's reorganization is still monitored very closely. The management really focuses on individual feelings. Two main entities were created: “Métiers”, handling catenaries, railroads, workers, building sites, construction and small projects “International and Projects”, which takes charge of complex project designing and management. As a consequence, Seco-Rail and SPIE Rail merger was on an equal footing and allowed the new structure to succeed in its challenge of becoming an integrated player. [...]
[...] Colas Rail enjoys a worldwide presence that permits the company to bid for more tenders than its competitors, and compensate a decline of one market by the growth of another This worldwide presence, as well as the variety of its products, impart a varied working experience to Colas Rail, and enable it to capitalize this experience. It is a virtuous circle, where the particular constructions, fields, weather, ground consistency experienced by Colas Rail constitute a competitive advantage when bidding for similar projects or similar geological conditions. [...]
[...] Colas Rail clearly has an edge over its competitors owing to the deep pocket strategy implemented by Colas. Since the parent company is also focused on the BTP sector, it frequently provides Colas Rail projects, implying that Colas Rail is more efficient and spends less in client prospection. R&D developers have always been positive agents, as described before. The main weaknesses relate to the company's international presence. Albeit globalized, Colas Rail has no venture in countries developing big railway projects such as China and the USA. [...]
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