Table of contents
1. When can an applicant expect an alternative offer?
Conflict resolution including the alternative offer is a part of the pre-allocation phase of the RFC workflow between X-8 and X-7.5. It affects only those dossiers that contain PaPs and were submitted as New Path Requests. In the case of Late or ad hoc path requests, there isn’t any conflict resolution, the procedure is first come first served.
If an Applicant’s dossier is in conflict with another dossier and its priority value is lower, the RFCs may select the option to offer an alternative PaP for the conflicting one. The dossier is in the alternative offered phase in the pre-booking process:
Sample request created for the presentation purpose: the SIB-C / Infrabel territory contains AGETestPaP22 PaP section
2. Notification
PCS notifies the members of the dossier that an alternative offer was sent by the RFCs. Even if the alternative offer is only on a single section and does not affect all the Applicants, PCS notifies all active users from the involved Applicant agencies.
After the notification e-mail, the Applicants should log in to PCS and check the alternative offer in detail. Clicking on the link in the email will open the file in PCS if you are already logged in. If PCS was not open, you should log in and click the link provided in the email to access the dossier.
3. Acceptance of the alternative offer
With the next step, applicants should select the C-OSS timetable to check the provided alternative offer where they have read-only rights in this phase.
In the compare sub-path, applicants can compare if the PaP section(s) were changed (times, days..etc) or removed from the dossier and were replaced by other PaP section(s). In the below example, the applicant’s request had the PaP ID: AGETestPaP22 and the C-OSS was offered as an alternative PaP ID AGETestPaP23 which is basically the same PaP section running at different times with different Catalogue and path number)
In order to continue the path request process, the involved Applicants have to make a statement regarding the alternative offer. Every involved Applicant (even if the alternative is on the other Applicant’s timetable) has to accept or reject the alternative offer. It also indicated on Control:
After checking the offer in detail, the applicant should set the lights in order to respond and notify C-OSS of the decision (accept/reject). In our example, the applicants are “happy” with the alternative offer and set their lights to green to show their acceptance. After the “Accept Alternative Offer” becomes enabled applicants should press the button in order to send their response and agreement to the C-OSS managers.
Please note if the “response” is not sent the dossier will stuck in the process and C-OSS managers cannot process the dossier further.
Based on the Applicant’s decision the RFCs can continue the PaP pre-allocation process (by pressing the button on Control to proceed with pre-booking and leave the alternate branch)
- If the alternative offer is accepted, then they will forward the rest of the dossier to the IMs for timetable, if it’s necessary
- If the alternative offer is rejected, then they will forward the whole dossier as a tailor-made request to the IMs
