The detailed description of the project is: "Conceptual development of the APEX application platform, as well as contingents for individual commissioning for new development and further development, as well as maintenance of Apex applications; Quotas for the administrative maintenance of the Apex software components, release upgrades and the further development of the application "Contract Management"

In 2012 and 2016, the German Federal Railway Authority put the Apex application platform (AWP) out to tender and had it implemented by a service provider. This is used to cover the range of small and medium-sized specialist applications. The concept of the prototypical approach used in the AWP has proven itself strongly and is very well received and in demand by the specialist services.

The tenders carried out in previous years also included a contingent of person-days for the new development, care and maintenance of Apex specialist applications. As a result of the strong demand described above, these quotas are not sufficient. Therefore, with this call for tenders, a new contingent of person-days is put out to tender, which is to be used for the same purposes. In addition, the existing Apex application Contract Management is to be further developed in the course of this.

Knowledge of the development of specialist applications on this platform is available in the EBA and could be further expanded if necessary. However, since the EBA's IT strategy does not provide for in-house development and the available personnel resources are not available for this purpose in the long term, a suitable external service provider is necessary for the development of small and medium-sized specialist applications on this application platform.

Likewise, the operation of this platform must be ensured by the internal IT and the maintenance of the resulting specialist applications by the external service provider.

In particular, the structure that has grown in the specialist services for solving specialist processes, for which standard software could often not be used, is to be regarded as problematic. Here, a large number of individual solutions have already been developed using Excel or Access, which cause problems in the context of operational management. In the course of operating system conversions and MS Office releases, permanent operation is not guaranteed. In addition, the lack of multi-user access, poor maintainability and a lack of a backup strategy are disadvantages of this solution.

The future contractor must maintain the specifications of the concept in the plant and update them accordingly. In particular, reference is made to the prototypical approach, which has proven itself very well in the EBA and should be retained.

The targeted specialist applications are to be used in all EBA locations.

The following goals were formulated for the projects resulting from the tender in the course of the expansion of the APEX application platform, as well as the development or further development of new specialist applications:

- the continuation of the concept of the Apex application platform for the application of Oracle APEX with corresponding framework specifications such as application templates and data models to be used

- Provide the ability to use contingents of person-days to retrieve future requirements for development with Oracle APEX in a timely manner. This includes both new developments and transfers of Excel and Access applications available in the specialist service to Oracle APEX in accordance with the IT strategy of Ref 13

- Carrying out regular performance analyses of the Oracle infrastructure with regard to its previous and intended use

- compliance with and updating of the apex concept in the plant

Please refer to the published documents for the details of the call for tenders, in particular the specifications and the bidder information.