SWITZERLAND: Stadler has lodged an appeal with the Federal Administrative Court challenging Swiss Federal Railway’s selection of Siemens Mobility for a SFr2bn contract to supply 116 double-deck electric multiple-units with options for up to 84 more .
‘The Federal Administrative Court, as an independent judicial authority, should review the award decision for its correctness’, Stadler Chairman Peter Spuhler said after the appeal was lodged on November 27.
Stadler said that after undertaking ‘in-depth analysis’ of the decision in favour of Siemens Mobility which had been announced on November 7, the company:
- ‘cannot understand the points of the evaluation and the resulting award decision’;
- believes its bid based on the proven Kiss double-deck EMU family ‘was undervalued compared to a train that only exists on paper’;
- ‘cannot understand how the winning bid was able to stand out in terms of evaluated criteria such as operating costs, quality, maintenance, sustainability or service contracts.’
The Siemens EMUs are to be built at Krefeld in Germany, while Stadler it would have built them in Switzerland.
Stadler said it offers quality, reliability and adherence to deadlines, and decides where orders will be processed on a case-by-case basis. It said it ‘does not want protectionism and has never demanded it’, and ‘always faces tough international competition‘. It said it ‘always accepts clear results that lead to negative award decisions’, and ‘only resorts to legal remedies in exceptional cases.’
SBB replies
Shortly after Stadler’s announcement on November 28, SBB issued a statement saying that the decision was made strictly in accordance with legal requirements.
SBB said it understood the dissapointment of the losing bidders, but the competition had not been close and Siemens Mobility had made ‘clearly the most advantageous offer‘ based on the objective and independent evaluation by around 100 SBB specialists.
SBB said price differences quoted by Stadler referred only to the investment cost, and when taking into account operating and maintenance costs over the 25-year service life of the trains the price difference added up to a ‘three-digit million‘ amount.
SBB said it was not possible to estimate how long the procurement will be delayed by the appeal; it had planned to deploy the new trains from 2031.
