Stephan Pfuhl has served as the president of Forum Train Europe since 2012 and will be moving on from that role in March of 2023. Stephan fulfilled his role as president while also serving as head of supply chain management at Swiss Federal Railways, as head of long-distance traffic, and in SBB’s corporate development department. To commemorate Stephan’s time at FTE, we sat down with him for a talk about his presidency, the role of Forum Train Europe in the railway sector, and the future.
How did you end up on the Executive Board of Forum Train Europe and what positions and duties did you hold at SBB while you were also the president of FTE?
I started within SBB from the 1st of August 2007 as Head of Corporate Development and I was responsible for building up this unit over the next 3 1/2 years. Strategy and projects were the basis of everyday’s work. As a member of the extended executive board really helped me to get insights into SBB and I was able to establish a good network and strong relationships with our neighbour railway companies. After that I became the Head of Passenger Long Distance Traffic (national and international), when the former president of FTE addressed me to take over his job. And as this long-distance traffic was highly international with all our partner railway companies, there was a strong coordination with FTE topics.
In the last years I was responsible for the Corporate Supply Chain Management and especially involved with procurement topics. So, it's quite a big variety of topics which helped me understand the network and the challenges of SBB as well as using the international network to move topics ahead.
And coming from corporate development, I had a lot to do with the restructuring of our freight business, among many other projects, and therefore I talked a lot to investors, competitors, customers and learned about the challenges and needs of freight traffic. So that helped me as well to shape the picture of the market needs of passenger and freight transport undertakings.