WP 01 – Specification Catalogue
Overall Context
Development of voluntary requirements to describe vehicle demand within a specific operational context for a tender.
With respect to RTR Work Package 01 – Specification Catalogue, the Initiative aimed to create a harmonized voluntary requirements framework that can be commonly applied across the industry. As of today, requirements of operators as part of rolling stock tenders often represent extensive lists, which consequently lead to a project driven procurement of rolling stock. These are on the one hand highly customized to the specific needs of an operator, but at the same time result in long lead times and high costs.
To streamline this, RTR Work Package 01 has worked towards a common set of basic voluntary requirements. These can be applied across tenders and can therefore support the overall reduction of tender lead times.
Being part of the overall RTR Initiative, results from this Work Package have been developed according to the RTR-compliance mechanism (Antitrust Council) as well as by integrating an external legal competition advisor.
Documents about Specification Catalogue
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Objectives
Further moving towards a product-based business approach
In order to achieve the industry’s transformation towards a product-based business approach, the work package pursued a subset of three objectives:
- Common requirement structures:
Definition of voluntary requirements for the classification and description of train vehicle requirements, which all parties across the European railway industry can use.
- Common basic requirements:
Definition of basic requirements which are already commonly applied and generally agreed in the procurement of rolling stock and which can be voluntarily applied by operators across tenders for rolling stock procurement of EMU’s.
- Functional requirements transformation:
Conversion of requirements towards a rather functionally driven approach to allow for alternative technical solutions and/ or innovations by suppliers.
The defined framework of the RTR Target Specification Structure is based on five different levels (Level 01 – 05) of a pyramidal structure, which can be used to describe the hierarchical layers of requirements/ information towards a rolling stock product (see Figure 1).
RTR Pyramid Structure
Introduction
The RTR pyramid structure can be subdivided into three major segments, which will further be explained in detail as shown in Figure 2:
- Operational Train Demand (Level 01 – 03):
Voluntary requirements to describe vehicle demand within a specific operational context for a tender. It will cover the overarching operational concept (Level 01), the intended train concept (Level 02) as well as descriptions of relevant external interfaces (Level 03).
- Train(set) System (Level 04):
The train(set) system describes all topics & functionalities which cannot be attributed to an individual (sub-)system of a rolling stock product (e.g. HVAC) but are in the first place valid for the train as a whole (e.g. fire safety).
- (Sub-)Systems (Level 05):
The (sub-)system level covers a breakdown of specific technical modules of a rolling stock product, as e.g. exterior doors or an HVAC system. The breakdown list of potential (sub-)systems that are part of a train is defined based on the norm EN15380-5, which is as well applied by the RTR Initiative.
Although all the three segments will contain requirements for a rolling stock tender, particularly the two segments Train(set) System (Level 04) and (Sub-)Systems (Level 05) may contain four different types of requirements. As illustrated on the right-bottom of Figure 2, the four types of requirements are Basic Requirements, Attributes for Configuration, Pre-defined Features and Customization Requirements.
At this point, specific attention shall be places on the first pillar: Basic Requirements
Commonly applied Basic Requirements
Introduction
Basic requirements are considered as the minimum requirements to achieve a certified and authorized train suitable for the intended specific operational context. The basic requirements, as defined by RTR, contain three groups of requirements as illustrated in Figure 3:
- Legal Requirements
- Norms & Standards
- Commonly applied and generally agreed Industry Practices (i.e. commonly applied in procurement of rolling stock and exceeding/ existing norms & standards)
These requirements are collected and codified among the participating RTR members and represents a minimum voluntary threshold of requirements that any train should be able to fulfill in order to get into operations.
Basic voluntary requirements can be applied for every tender and can be revised periodically independent from an individual project/ tender within the group of operators and suppliers. They can be rather attached to the tender in form of a standardized requirement structure.
Benefits
The description of commonly applied and generally agreed industry practices is the essential basis to move towards a product driven approach with adding value at:
- Fostering real industrial “good practice”
- Inefficiencies through individual/ customization requirements of operators will be minimized
- Description of commonly applied and generally agreed industry practices by operators and suppliers
- Reducing tender process times for operators & suppliers as less individual/ customization requirements must be considered across tenders
- Providing clarity regarding (voluntary) minimum platform characteristics
- Integrating a maximum of (voluntary) “standard” requirements into the suppliers’ platform developments, thus reducing engineer to order efforts
- Moving further towards harmonized products for central system elements (e.g. door width)
