Rail Industry Tenders: Why Complex Specifications Need New Tools

Introduction

In September 2025, the largest S-Bahn contract in German history was awarded: €15 billion, 1,400 new cars, and a consortium of DB, Siemens and Stadler. The tender had begun in 2020, was extended 25 times and accompanied by a legal challenge from Alstom. Five years from the call for competition to the award. Ultimately, the procurement procedure was deemed unlawful in key respects by Berlin’s Higher Regional Court.

Berlin is an extreme case, but not an isolated one. Rising passenger numbers, political support for the transport transition and an ageing fleet are generating ever more tenders, with specifications that are becoming increasingly extensive. Battery-electric propulsion, new TSI revisions and cybersecurity requirements: all of this ends up in specification documents that would not have existed in this form ten years ago.

What follows: market figures, the mechanics of competitive procurement, five concrete case studies and what all this means for bid managers.

The European rolling-stock market

According to the UNIFE World Rail Market Study 2024 (10th edition, prepared by Bain & Company and presented at InnoTrans), the global rail market reached an average annual volume of €201.8 billion (2021–2023). Of that, €63.3 billion is rolling stock, ahead of services (€77.1 billion), infrastructure (€38.1 billion) and rail control systems (€22.3 billion).

The independent analysis by SCI Verkehr confirms this scale: manufacturers’ total revenue rose to €65 billion in 2024 (+11% compared with 2022). SCI forecasts annual market growth of 4.0% over the next five years, with digital solutions growing even faster at 4.6%.

Western Europe recorded the strongest regional growth in 2023 at 7.3%, driven mainly by post-pandemic catch-up effects and climate programmes in Germany, France and the UK. In November 2025, the European Commission presented an action plan for high-speed rail : €345 billion for the TEN-T network, aiming to double high-speed rail by 2030 and triple it by 2050. Through the Connecting Europe Facility, the EU has already funded 804 rail projects with €34.4 billion.

OEM order books

How full the order books of the major rolling-stock manufacturers are can be seen in concrete figures:

Alstom reported a record order backlog of €100.3 billion in Q3 2025/26 , with a book-to-bill ratio of 1.8 in rolling stock. In other words: for every euro of revenue, €1.80 in new orders comes in. In the 2024/25 financial year , revenue was €18.5 billion (€9.5 billion of it in rolling stock), while European order intake was €13.1 billion. In Q3 2025/26 alone, Alstom produced 3,078 cars. Recent major orders include France, €1.4 billion (30 Eurostar trains); Poland, €1.6 billion (42 Coradia Max); Germany, €500 million (Coradia Max option); and Greece, €393 million (23 Coradia Stream).

Siemens Mobility, according to the International Railway Journal , tripled order intake to €7.9 billion in Q3 2025, including €3.5 billion for Egypt’s high-speed system and €1.7 billion for US high-speed trains. Comparable quarterly revenue rose 19% to €3.1 billion.

Stadler Rail reached an order backlog of CHF 29.2 billion (previous year: CHF 24.4 billion) across 360 ongoing orders, according to its 2024 annual results. Around 500 vehicles were delivered in 2024. According to SCI Verkehr, the company holds 19% of the European rolling-stock market, second behind Alstom at 39%.

Order books of the three largest European rolling-stock manufacturers (bn EUR / CHF). Sources: Alstom Q3 FY2025/26, Stadler 2024 annual results, IRJ/Siemens FY2025.

The pipeline is growing faster than capacity can work through it. Every one of these orders begins with a customer specification that must be translated into a technical specification. Delays during the bid phase shift the entire supply chain.

The German rail industry in figures

Germany is Europe’s largest rolling-stock market. According to the VDB’s 2024 industry figures (published in May 2025), the German rail industry reached record revenue of €15 billion (+4.2% year on year): €10.5 billion in vehicles and €4.5 billion in infrastructure. Order intake was €18.3 billion. That is 15% less than in the record year 2023 (€21.5 billion, +57%), but still a high level. Export business grew by 16%.

VDB 2024 industry figures (in €100 million). Source: VDB, May 2025.

Regional rail: where the vehicles are needed

Most vehicle procurement in Germany takes place through regional passenger rail (SPNV). The VDB White Paper on Rolling Stock provides the figures:

More than 2,100 vehicles—around one third of the total fleet—must be replaced or comprehensively modernised by 2038. At several million euros per vehicle, this produces procurement volume in the double-digit billions. In addition, passenger numbers have risen 18% since 2010 to 2.6 billion annually, and passenger-kilometres by 25%. So the issue is not only ageing, but capacity as well.

The BSN vehicle recommendations (4th edition, January 2023) provide a degree of standardisation by harmonising minimum vehicle requirements across state borders. Individual federal states take their own approach: Baden-Württemberg, through its BW model , has separated vehicle procurement from operating awards. The SFBW state agency procures and finances the vehicles itself, strengthening competition because smaller railway undertakings do not have to bear vehicle-financing risk.

Competitive procurement: the mechanics

Regional rail in Germany is organised through competitive procurement procedures. Twenty-seven transport authorities—from the Bavarian Railway Company to Schleswig-Holstein’s local transport company—tender transport services for which railway undertakings bid. The contract goes to the most economically advantageous offer that meets the customer specification.

From monopoly to competition—and to its limits

The foundation is the 1994 rail reform and the regionalisation of local rail in 1996. Since then, the competitive share has risen continuously. According to the 9th Railway Competitors Report 2025/2026 from mofair and Die Güterbahnen, competitors (non-DB companies) accounted for 40.7% of traffic volume in 2024, compared with 39.4% in 2021. More than 50 different railway undertakings compete for contracts.

Regional rail market shares by traffic volume (%). Sources: mofair Competitors Report 2025/26, schienennahverkehr.de.

However, the report also identifies a turning point: fewer and fewer new providers are taking part in tenders. Only existing operators can realistically assess and price the operational risks. Track-access charges have risen by double digits in recent years, while regionalisation funding has been reduced. According to the report, Germany has Europe’s highest long-distance track-access charges. For new market entrants, this is an almost insurmountable barrier.

The Fourth Railway Package and European market opening

At European level, the EU’s Fourth Railway Package (2016) introduced the principle of mandatory tendering for public-service rail operations (PSO contracts). Implementation is complete: eight Member States transposed it on time by June 2019, while the rest used the COVID-related extension to October 2020. Since then, ERA has been the central authorisation authority for cross-border vehicles.

For Germany, which has relied on competition in regional rail since the 1990s, the Fourth Railway Package changes less than it does for Member States whose markets were previously closed. But market opening increases competitive pressure across Europe, and with it the volume of tenders to which manufacturers and suppliers must respond.

Tenders in practice: five case studies

Market figures alone reveal little about how tenders work in practice. Five current procurement procedures make it more tangible.

Berlin S-Bahn: €15bn, 5 years, 25 extensions

The Berlin S-Bahn contract is the largest regional-rail award in German history. It covers 1,400 new cars (Series 483/484) for two thirds of Berlin’s S-Bahn network, 15 years of operation and 30 years of vehicle maintenance. The tender for the North-South and Stadtbahn sub-networks began in June 2020; previously, the Senate had tendered the first sub-network (Ring/South-East) in 2012.

Bid deadlines were extended at least 25 times, and the binding submission deadline was postponed at least six times from March 2024. Alstom lodged an objection with the procurement review body. In March 2024, Berlin’s Higher Regional Court held that the procedure breached procurement law in key respects; however, Alstom had not raised its complaint in time. Operations are due to begin in 2031.

Munich S-Bahn: €2bn+ framework agreement

In 2023, Siemens Mobility won the billion-euro framework agreement for 90 new Mireo S-Bahn trains, with an option for 90 more (up to 200 in total). The agreement runs until the end of 2034. In parallel, DB Regio launched the “S-Bahn 2029+” programme in March 2025: another framework agreement for up to 400 standardised S-Bahn vehicles for the Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich metropolitan areas.

ÖBB: €5bn+ framework agreement for 540 EMUs

In 2023, Austrian Federal Railways awarded Siemens Mobility a framework agreement for up to 540 Mireo EMUs worth more than €5 billion potentially, with a term of ten years. The first 70 vehicles were called off in January 2024, and another 30 in February 2025. The ÖBB case also shows the risks: the prior major order for Bombardier Talent 3 (a framework agreement for up to 300 vehicles) was cancelled after years of testing without approval. The loss: hundreds of millions of euros for everyone involved.

SBB FLIRT Evo: CHF 2.1bn for fleet standardisation

In May 2022, Swiss Federal Railways awarded Stadler a major order for 286 FLIRT Evos (CHF 2.1 billion), with an option for 224 more (up to 510 in total). SBB aims to move its entire regional fleet to a single platform. Initial deliveries began in November 2023; deliveries from Stadler’s Bussnang plant will continue until 2034.

RRX: lessons from a pilot project

The Rhine-Ruhr Express (82 Siemens Desiro HC trains, €1.7 billion including 32 years of maintenance) was a pilot project in several respects: for the first time, North Rhine-Westphalia separated vehicle procurement from operation. The vehicles are made available to the operator on a lease-like basis. All 82 trains were delivered by 2023.

The problems were not with the vehicle, but the operator: Abellio Rail NRW became insolvent and had to hand operations over to three replacement operators (DB Regio NRW, National Express and VIAS Rail) on 1 February 2022, with an extremely short lead time. EBA approval came only four days before the planned start of operations in December 2018. The vehicles worked. The operator did not.

The propulsion transition: BEMUs, hydrogen and new requirement categories

Volume alone is not the problem. Battery-electric multiple units (BEMUs) add requirement categories that simply did not appear in traditional diesel or electric specifications: battery lifecycle, thermal management, charging-infrastructure interfaces and energy-management strategies. An article in Global Railway Review describes 2026 as the turning point at which discontinuous electrification becomes the industry standard.

While BEMU technology is gaining ground, hydrogen has proved more difficult. Alstom delivered 41 Coradia iLint trains to two German transport authorities: 27 to RMV (Hesse) and 14 to LNVG (Lower Saxony). In December 2024, the 27 Taunus trains were withdrawn from service; of the 14 LNVG vehicles, only four remained operational. Diesel trains filled the gaps. Alstom has ended hydrogen development and is focusing on battery technology instead.

What this means for bid managers: every BEMU tender contains a complete battery-system package in addition to the traditional requirements. There are not yet standardised specifications for it. Every transport authority is, to some extent, reinventing the wheel.

Why specifications keep getting thicker

It is not only the number of tenders that is increasing. Individual customer specifications are becoming more extensive too. The causes add up:

The EuroSpec standard for requirements management defines six core areas for structured requirements administration: requirement characteristics, syntax, attributes, traceability, validation/verification and data exchange. An academic study on the challenges of requirements management in complex rail projects categorises the problems in four dimensions—process, organisation, environment and technology—and identifies missing company-wide methods, inconsistent data models and incompatible toolchains as core issues.

The authorisation process as a bottleneck

What is promised in the bid must later be authorised. Vehicle authorisation therefore affects the entire procurement process. Since the Fourth Railway Package, the European Union Agency for Railways (ERA) has been responsible for authorising cross-border vehicles; for national vehicles, applicants can choose between ERA and the national authority (in Germany, the EBA).

The imbalance is striking: since 2019, ERA has authorised more than 80,000 vehicles and issued 450+ safety certificates, with 184 staff and an annual budget of €30 million. The European Commission warnsthat the duration and cost of authorisation have “not been visibly reduced”. Authorisation complexity is the most frequently reported problem. The coexistence of ERA and national authorities creates duplicate checks and different fee structures.

The Commission plans a revision of the ERA Regulation for 2026, aiming to reduce authorisation time by up to 30%. In Germany, a joint declaration of intent was signed in January 2025 by BMDV, EBA, VDB, VDV and DB AG, intended to treat national technical rules as equivalent to TSIs.

What this means for bid managers

Growing market, denser regulation, more competition. Bid managers are hit in two places at once:

Ricardo puts it succinctly: “Multiple stakeholder communities have their own assumptions and expectations, many of which have the power to assert their influence even after a system has entered service.” Anyone who has managed requirements in the rail industry will recognise this.

Tools and processes: the status quo

Faced with these challenges, vehicle manufacturers and suppliers use a range of tools, from Excel spreadsheets to integrated requirements-management systems. Major OEMs typically rely on established ALM platforms such as IBM DOORS or Siemens Polarion, which provide complete traceability and change management.

Yet these systems are not without problems either: Jama Software documents that users “often reject DOORS and work in Word/Excel instead”. The reasons are complex architecture, an outdated UI and no cloud option. Customisations from the Classic version cannot be transferred to DOORS Next.

For many mid-sized suppliers, which contribute a large share of value creation in the German rail industry, these systems are oversized or too expensive. Excel-based workflows still dominate here, reaching their limits as requirement volumes rise (see also our article “From spreadsheet to platform”).

The gap between what large ALM systems offer and what spreadsheet-based workflows can achieve is the space in which specialised platforms for bid preparation are emerging. Solutions such as Tendric promise requirements capture, classification, expert routing and technical-specification export without the complexity and implementation cost of DOORS or Polarion.

What will change in the coming years

The 2,100+ vehicles that must be replaced by 2038 according to the VDB White Paper are only the German share. There are also the framework agreements of ÖBB (540 EMUs), SBB (510 FLIRT Evos) and DB (S-Bahn 2029+, 73 additional ICE orders). Tender volume will remain high for years.

BEMU has moved beyond the pilot phase. Since December 2024, Schleswig-Holstein has operated the world’s first larger battery network in regular service. By 2029, more than 200 BEMU vehicles will be delivered in Germany alone, for which there are still no standardised specifications.

On the regulatory side, the Rail Acceleration Commission established in 2022 has presented 70 recommendations for action, 96% of which the federal government adopted. The Planning Acceleration Act entered into force at the end of 2023; corridor renovation (Riedbahn, Hamburg–Berlin, Emmerich–Oberhausen) is under way. At the same time, Germany’s ETCS fitment rate is just 1.6% of the network, the European Commission wants to enforce rollout strictly, and every new vehicle must be ETCS-capable.

Added to that is the VDB proposal to move to functional specifications from 2030. That would change customer specifications: fewer individual requirements, but evidence that the vehicle concept meets functional objectives. And AI in bid preparation (requirements extraction, standards recognition, classification support) is moving from the pilot phase into practice. Siemens Polarion introduced its first AI functions in 2025, while specialised providers such as Tendric are building AI-supported workflows specifically for the rail industry.

Conclusion

The European rolling-stock market exceeds €200 billion and is growing. Alstom alone has €100 billion in backlog. More than 2,100 vehicles in German regional rail must be replaced by 2038. And the specifications that start this entire process are becoming more extensive every year because of BEMU, digitalisation and new standards.

The case studies show what this means in practice: Berlin needed five years and 25 deadline extensions. Talent 3 failed authorisation, causing losses in the hundreds of millions. Coradia Max deliveries have been delayed for the fourth time. NRW BEMUs were postponed by two years because of subsequent specification changes.

Those who can process hundreds to thousands of requirements efficiently, classify them correctly and answer them on time—whether with established ALM systems or specialised platforms such as Tendric—win contracts. Those who cannot lose them, irrespective of the vehicle’s technical quality.