Rail qualification systems: who can bid is settled before the tender

When a rail buyer awards work through a qualification system, who can bid is settled before any contract goes to tender: each contract is put out only to firms already qualified in the system. Directive 2014/25/EU, which applies to networks serving the public by railway, automated systems or tramway, lets the buyer make the system’s notice its call for competition, provided the notice says so; each contract the system covers is then awarded by restricted or negotiated procedure, with every tenderer chosen from the candidates already qualified.¹ For a contractor, the decision that matters is whether, and when, to get onto the list.

Iarnród Éireann’s notice of 24 April 2026, for a qualification system for civil engineering works of €1m to €5m, says that all project works shall be tendered to the companies approved for the system.² ÖBB-Infrastruktur’s notice of 9 July 2026 stresses that it concerns a qualification system and not a tender: firms that pass are entered in a register and, in specific awards, invited directly to tender without further notice.³ Deutsche Bahn’s notice of 10 December 2025 for ETCS infrastructure installations calls itself a call for competition, and warns that passing the prequalification does not guarantee a place in any competition.⁴ How signalling work is bought around systems such as this one is the subject of the ERTMS procurement guide.

Where the effort of running a procedure calls for it, the directive also lets a buyer reduce, on objective rules, the number of candidates it invites, though the number must take account of the need for adequate competition.¹ Under the directive, a place on the list is the condition for an invitation, not a promise of one. Network Rail can select from a standing list in the same way, through RISQS, the Rail Industry Supplier Qualification Scheme that RSSB runs, but under UK rules rather than the directive.

The notice states what the system will buy, the conditions a supplier must meet and how long the system runs; the buyer reports any change to that period and ends the system with an award notice. The buyer keeps a written record of qualified firms, which may be divided by type of contract.¹

A notice used as the call for competition stays published for as long as the system runs, and suppliers must be able to apply at any time in that period. It is not a closing date. The buyer must decide on an application within six months, and explain within two months if it will need more than four. A firm short of references may rely on other companies’ capacities, if it proves they stay available to it for the system’s whole validity, and for qualifications and experience only where those companies will do the work.¹

The Cabinet Office’s guidance says the Procurement Act 2023 replaces qualification systems, and dynamic purchasing systems, with the dynamic market: a list of qualified suppliers eligible to take part in future procurements.⁶ Qualification systems under the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016 continue where the utility submitted the notice before 24 February 2025, and they expire at the end of 23 February 2029 at the latest; those Regulations do not extend to Scotland.^{7, 8}

As of 30 October 2026, Network Rail’s supplier page calls RISQS a qualification system under those Regulations, from which it may select participants for what it buys directly without a further call for competition; suppliers of safety-critical goods, works or services who want to contract with it directly register on RISQS with audited status.⁹ RSSB said on 18 May 2026 that Network Rail and Network Rail High Speed had confirmed they use RISQS as a qualifying utilities dynamic market under the Act, and that other rail buyers use it in that context.¹⁰ Both statements can hold during the transition, since a system whose notice was submitted before 24 February 2025 runs on under the 2016 Regulations until it expires; which regime governs a given procurement is a question for that procurement’s own documents.

Under the Act, a utility may award contracts by reference to membership of a utilities dynamic market, and arrangements set up by anyone count as such a market if they meet the Act’s requirements for one set up by a private utility. That is what lets a scheme run by someone else, such as RISQS, serve a utility as its market. Where the market was set up by a qualifying utilities dynamic market notice, one published beforehand saying that only members will be told of future contracts, each tender notice is not published: it goes to members, and may also go to suppliers whose applications are still pending.^{5, 6}

Applications must be accepted at any time and membership cannot be capped; the conditions, which cannot change during the market’s term, must be proportionate and may not require a supplier to have been awarded a contract by a particular authority. A utilities dynamic market may charge suppliers fees for obtaining and maintaining membership.⁵

Under its procedure rules valid from 1 September 2026, Deutsche Bahn runs its infrastructure prequalification as a qualification system under Germany’s Sector Procurement Ordinance, with a notice in the Official Journal every year for each category; 15 categories are run centrally, and a firm applies separately for each. Track alone has nine product groups: track and switches, each in four line classes up to high-speed lines above 160 km/h, plus repair work.¹¹

As of 30 October 2026, RFI’s page lists its active works systems trade by trade, among them railway track and signalling.¹² Its track system has six value classes, from class 1, up to €850,000, to class 6, above €16,000,000.¹³ When RFI tenders works from one of its value-class systems, it invites every firm registered, on the day the invitation goes out, in the system that the contract’s main category belongs to; each may take part up to its own class plus one fifth.¹⁴ Here RFI goes further than the directive requires: registration in the right system brings the invitation, though not the work, and the class caps the size of contract a firm may bid for.

ProRail’s page, updated 13 April 2026, says it recognises firms branch by branch, from engineering firms to suppliers of rail infrastructure systems, so that no separate selection is needed for each tender.¹⁵ At DB and RFI, a place on one list does not carry over to the next, and within a list the class or product group sets what a firm can be invited to.

Deutsche Bahn’s procedure runs in German and under German law, as a rule in two stages, the second examining references, technical equipment, staffing and qualifications, among other things. A prequalification is valid for four years, provided requalification is applied for in time and granted, and the application is due at least two years before the term ends; a refused firm may reapply only after six months.¹¹ A firm that wants to stay in must apply no later than halfway through its term.

A firm new to DB or newly founded, for example, can obtain a prequalification “with conditions”, which only references for DB group work in that product group can replace. Moving up to higher-rated product groups needs DB references at the higher level, as a rule as DB’s main contractor, rated at least “good”, and is closed to firms with conditions. In track, a prequalification with conditions stops at the mixed-traffic class (121 to 160 km/h), and the high-speed and S-Bahn classes can be reached only by extending a mixed-traffic prequalification, with at least one reference at the next level, in principle under a direct contract with DB.¹¹ A newcomer cannot qualify straight into DB’s high-speed track work on the strength of work for other clients: the way up runs, as a rule, through work on DB’s own contracts, which DB then rates.

In the long run, staying in takes DB work too. Requalification asks for work for DB in the category in the last three years, directly or as a subcontractor. Comparable work for other clients earns one extension; the next time, a firm must show at least a tender or a request to participate in a DB competition, for a last extension, or it falls back to a prequalification with conditions.¹¹

RFI’s track system puts a firm that shows no works contracts from the previous 60 months in class 1, the access class, provided it meets the other requirements.¹³ Under its general rules of 8 January 2026, RFI decides within six months of a complete application, and a qualification then stays valid without time limit while the requirements continue to be met.¹⁸

Under ProRail’s recognition scheme, in force from 29 September 2023, a firm that meets every other requirement but cannot show its technical ability through completed work must carry out one or more recognition projects and, until ProRail decides, is invited to its tenders below the European threshold in the field applied for.¹⁹ Recognition then stays valid until it is withdrawn, and ProRail checks, among other things through performance measurements, that firms still meet the requirements.¹⁵

All three start a first-time entrant on smaller or lower-rated work, through DB’s conditions, RFI’s access class or ProRail’s recognition projects, before the larger contracts open to it. With decisions allowed to take up to six months and entry starting low, a firm that waits to apply until it sees the contract it wants risks missing it.

Under the directive, a buyer may accept another body’s qualification system as meeting its requirements, and must then tell interested suppliers which bodies those are.¹ DB’s prequalification applies across the DB group.¹¹ Firms qualified by RFI may be invited by RFI and by other companies of the Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane group.¹⁸ Ferrovie Emilia Romagna said in a notice of 24 August 2026 that it may use RFI’s systems at its discretion, or require qualification in the relevant RFI system as a condition for taking part in its tenders.²¹ SNCF Réseau’s system may be used by four other SNCF companies, among them SNCF Voyageurs and Fret SNCF, provided its qualification requirements are met.¹⁶ A qualification with a large network can thus count for its group companies’ contracts too and, in Italy and through RISQS in the UK, for other buyers’ contracts as well: a benefit to set against the cost and time of obtaining it.

Deutsche Bahn publishes its directory: as of 8 October 2026, the track category lists each firm by product group, marks those with conditions, and gives each firm’s deadline to apply for requalification and the end of its validity.²⁰ ProRail’s scheme makes its list of recognised firms public.¹⁹ For a bidder, DB’s directory shows who can be selected alongside it, which of them hold only a conditional status, and when each listed firm’s status comes up for renewal.

Contracts at or above the directive’s thresholds, set for 2026-2027 at €5,404,000 for works and €432,000 for supplies and services, net of VAT, still produce award notices: the directive requires one within 30 days of each such contract’s conclusion.¹ For a firm outside the system, those notices are a public record of the larger contracts the system has been used to buy, and from whom.

On 9 September 2026, the European Commission proposed a regulation on public contracts and concessions, COM(2026) 590, that would repeal Directive 2014/25/EU among others and apply two years after it enters into force. The proposal would let a buyer set up a qualification list, open to requests for admission at any time during its stated duration, and award each contract by inviting the operators admitted to the list or category, with a public summary of each result.²² As of 30 October 2026, the European Parliament’s procedure file showed the proposal in its preparatory phase in Parliament.²³ As proposed, the mechanism would stay under another name; until any regulation is adopted and applies, the directive’s rules govern.

Source: the rules, pages and notices named, cited below; the legal basis is as each document names it, and the term is either each firm’s qualification or the system’s own.^{3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21}

ListingMinds, “Rail qualification systems: who can bid is settled before the tender”, 3 November 2026. https://www.listingminds.com/transport/guides/rail-qualification-systems