Siemens Caltrans/IDOT Venture design, engineering, testing and delivery (2012-1Q 2024)

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When and if Amtrak orders single level cars, it is likely to be a conventional RFP process in keeping with past and present Federal practice. A strong business case for car replacement already exists, funding sources are the major missing pieces.
 
Green Maned Lion said:
Let me go a bit further on that the Simmons car is currently being built in the United States for bright line. As such the tooling for this car is currently available for production. This vehicle has been built in Europe for many years and has been used in Russia and other places in all kinds of applications including sleeping dining etc. etc. etc. Simmons has proven something completely unique to the American market in the past few years namely that they can deliver cars on budget and on time. We should be happy that we are going to be getting a proven design in the form of the Viaggio comfort, and not some unproven design that has to be modified To meet current standards and has to have tooling set up for it and is going to take years and years and years for The ordering states to take delivery.

The older cars do not have production line set up and Alstom will have to start all over again in order to produce the bilevel cars that were produced for surfline or use a few years ago. On the other hand Simmons not only has been building Viaggio comfort cars in the United States for bright line, but has been producing the Viaggio Comfort in Europe for all kinds of different applications, and likely already has a large supply or base for producing things like windows doors interior components and so on.

Going the route of the Simmons Viaggio comfort cars will result in a rapid delivery of cars and likely completion of this order in something approaching a reasonable time frame. Going for the absolutely perfect idea of a bilevel superliner style intercity car as it was originally planned will result in cars being delivered many years from now if at all. Building a real car is not as simple as unrolling the designs from previous build in a factory somewhere in pointing to the workers and say build it. Their certifications tooling designs and all kinds of other complicated and difficult to produce things that will have to be happen before even car one starts being built . Aside for the inclusion of traps for low-level boarding the Simmons Viaggio comfort cars as produced for Bright line are already ready for US applications

I apologize for any in accuracies this is my first use of a voice type application and I have not really gone over the post carefully for corrections
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Thank you for the informative post.
 
PVD said:
When and if Amtrak orders single level cars, it is likely to be a conventional RFP process in keeping with past and present Federal practice. A strong business case for car replacement already exists, funding sources are the major missing pieces.
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sThis is true, however Seimens record of timely production and delivery can be highly weighted when considering RFPs. There have certainly been more slanted RFPs in the world, my hometown specifying a 116" wheelbase and 4.6 liter engines for police vehicle contracts... which made Ford's Crown Victoria Police Interceptor the only option.

Contracts don't have to be lowest bidder only, if you can articulate a good reason why. CAF, NS, Hyundai-Rotem and Kawasaki have all demonstrated a consistent pattern of a complete ineptitude in timely delivery of quality products. That is a perfectly acceptable reason for disqualification. Seimens has demonstrated that every rail item ordered from them in the past ten years has been delivered on budget, roughly on time, and with much less teething issues than any other roll out I can think of. That is an excellent reason for bidder preference.
 
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That depends on what rules the contracts are covered under which is usually part of the funds source package. NY MTA often uses negotiated acquisitions after RFP evaluation rather than straight low bid for large purchases. It is much more difficult to do that under Federal procurement rules.
 
If I may, I am doing a copy/paste from a post I made at railroad.net regarding the procurement process for the bi-levels, which might help explain the process by which Sumitomo (and thus N-S) won the contract issued by Caltrans/IDOT. It was in response to a question regarding domestic content. I'd post the original question, but wouldn't do so without the poster's permission. Hope it helps.

Ideally, the Caltrans/IDOT RFP was seeking 100% US-sourced components for the bi-levels, but it is a little more complex than that.

The bidding procedure, as far as I've been able to discern, went this way:

When the RFP was released, 7 railcar manufacturers formally expressed interest in bidding. They were as follows-

-Alstom
-Bombardier
-CAF
-Hyundai Rotem
-Kawasaki
-Siemens
-Sumitomo

Because California was the lead purchaser of the bi-levels, California procurement procedures had to be followed. As such, the bidders first had to submit a draft proposal to Caltrans/IDOT. Hyundai Rotem dropped out without submitting a draft proposal.

After draft proposals from the 6 remaining bidders were received, they were evaluated, and each bidder attended confidential meetings with Caltrans/IDOT to discuss compliance issues each bidder had that may affect their chances of winning the contract. After the meetings, all 6 bidders were invited to submit a final proposal for evaluation. Bombardier chose to drop out without submitting a final proposal.

Caltrans/IDOT received final proposals from the 5 survivors. Despite whatever compliance issues were discussed with Siemens and Alstom during the draft proposal evaluation meetings, Caltrans/IDOT determined that those issues had not been properly addressed. Siemens' and Alstom's bids were disqualified for non-compliance.

The 3 compliant bids were evaluated and scored between 0-100 points, with the highest scoring bid winning the contract.

The Technical Proposal portion of the bid was worth a maximum of 70 points. Points were assigned as follows-

Technical Elements 30 points
Experience/References 7 points
Project Management 8 points
Schedule/Rate of Production 10 points
Buy America - Domestic Content 10 points *
Standardization 5 points
Maximum Possible Score 70 points

*A Buy America Worksheet, which lists all major railcar components, was submitted as part of each bid. Each component on the worksheet was assigned a weighted point value. For every component that the bidder would source domestically, the point value for that component was added to their worksheet score. A maximum of 80 points could potentially be awarded from the worksheet, provided every component was US-sourced. (Final assembly of the railcars in the US was an absolute)

If a bidder had received 76-80 points on the worksheet, they'd receive the full 10 points for Buy America - Domestic Content in the Technical Proposal portion of the bid evaluation. 71-75 points on the worksheet won the bidder 7 points, 65-70 worksheet points won the bidder 3 points. A worksheet score of 64 or less resulted in 0 points.

The Buy America worksheet can be viewed in the RFP itself which can be found at the following URL-
https://www.illinois.gov/cpo/dot/Documents/RailcarRFP.pdf
In my .PDF reader, the form can be found on pages 47-49.

Any bidder with a score of at least 56 points (80% of total possible points) in its Technical Proposal would then have its Price Proposal evaluated and scored. Maximum possible score for the Price Proposal was 30 points.

This is what I meant by "more complex" earlier. 100% domestic content was not an absolute, but a greater ratio of American-built components resulted in a better overall score. A manufacturer could source everything offshore, get 0 domestic content points, then have to be nearly perfect in every other aspect of the Technical Proposal to move onto the Price Proposal.

The three compliant proposals were scored as follows-

Sumitomo - 90.369 out of a possible 100 points
CAF - 86.463 out of a possible 100 points
Kawasaki - 85.242 out of a possible 100 points

By points, Sumitomo won the bid.

ETA - Did Sumitomo's reported lowballing on the price win them enough points in the Price Proposal portion of the bid evaluation process, possibly compensating for a weaker Technical Proposal, to win the contract, or would Sumitomo have won anyway, but with a slimmer margin than they eventually had? Perhaps a FOIA request may be in order.
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It is telling that three of the most reliable and most experienced in the US market, car builders dropped out. Would be interesting to see why Alstom and Siemens were reluctant to make the required compliance related changes. Mind you that the required compliance was to a specification that had never been validated apparently by any successful PoC. Seems suspiciously like the triumph of bureaucracy over common sense.

Sent from my iPhone using Amtrak Forum
 
While I dont disagree with you, as you pointed out, Alstom and Siemens both backed away saying they could not do it. One of the points of a reliable bidder is backing away from impossible, near impossible, or stupid work. Which would disqualify Bombardier with their $10 million dualmodes and MPV powercars.
 
While I dont disagree with you, as you pointed out, Alstom and Siemens both backed away saying they could not do it. One of the points of a reliable bidder is backing away from impossible, near impossible, or stupid work. Which would disqualify Bombardier with their $10 million dualmodes and MLV powercars.
 
Thank you for the photos. It is nice to see so many of the little things people mention incorporated into a real car. center armrests, flippable aisle armrests, better lighting, usb and power ports, bigger windows, grab handles for aisle travel, (lots more) as well as the under skin mechanical improvements in a modern car
 
The logo might change. Other than that it is unlikely that there will be any major change in ongoing projects. Going forward, there will be more sharing of technologies between the two arms of the new company. It takes a while for such things to settle down.
 
In a word "Maybe" If availability of more spares allows units to be properly fixed or not sent out when they are borderline, yes. If a rebuild plan were put into p[lace where we could sacrifice more units over longer periods of time, yes. If they conduct business as it has been conducted, no, they will just have more spares to use as protects when the failures continue to occur. Better availability of protects doesn't cut failures to a great degree, but it would probably cut down on rentals. If a unit were acting troublesome, I guess having one available for a swap before it quits completely is probably a plus.
 
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Bad maintenance practices and lazy employees is not solved by replacing equipment. I think some of the problem is that when Chicago maintenance is sending a unit out on a train, and they think something might be wrong, they cant be *bleep*ed to go to the trouble of swapping it out, or seeing if there is a quick fix they could implement that would give it a better chance of completing its run.

I dont think Amtrak actually has a performance evaluation metric that grades maintenance employees on the number of okd equipment that seppukus itself on a run- but they should.
 
Don't assume it is always on the workers. Very often management fails to create an environment where quality is possible, and sometimes quantity over quality is emphasized. You need to do x jobs in a week, regardless of whether the tools, parts, or capability exists. That is a common business practice.
 
While poor maintenance practices are certainly a problem at Amtrak, in fairness you also have to recognize the chronic shortages of equipment which don't allow sufficient time "in the shop". Lack of proper mechanical attention naturally leads to more locomotive failures, and a lack of sufficient spares inevitably results in marginal units being sent out lacking needed work which, while not critical, really ought to have been done first.
 
Amtrak's MPR page A 4.10 lists loco 457 as its 4 year compressor overhaul being cancelled at LAX. Stated reason is to save money and return the loco 457 back to the bank. That may mean all locos in that series are leased and will return as soon as required maintenance is missed or a major failure happens. From the entry appears 457 does not have to be returned to bank in operable condition ?

Time to start a F-59 sighting thread.
 
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