VDI-MT 5900 Part 2: what has applied since 1 February 2025 and what the guideline does not regulate

The VDI-MT 5900 series bears the title “Experts in automotive and road transport”. The suffix MT stands for “Mensch und Technik”, people and technology, and according to the guideline's preliminary note identifies documents that do not deal exclusively with technology in the sense of a rule of technology but, for example, with requirements for the qualification of persons working with technology. That is precisely its subject: which competences a person should have after completing training, how that training is structured, who examines, who certifies and how performance is later reviewed.

Part 1 “Basics” was published in March 2020 and lays down the competence framework for the whole series. Its introduction notes that outside sovereign inspection and appraisal activities there are hardly any legally anchored requirement and competence standards for experts, and that the job title is not expressly protected. According to the same introduction, the German Council on Jurisdiction in Traffic had already called for such standards in 1985, 2003, 2012 and 2015. Part 1 also provides that the parts of the series are to be updated regularly within a period of five years, and promptly in the event of fundamental technical innovations.

Part 2 “Damage and valuation” is the part that counts for experts preparing valuation and damage reports. According to vdi.de it was published in February 2025, comprises 44 pages and is available in a German-English issue, the German version being authoritative. The previous edition was a draft of June 2024. Each part of the series is to be used in conjunction with Part 1.

The scope of Part 2 is precisely defined. The guideline lists the competences with associated competence standards, as well as the teaching and learning content that vehicle damage and valuation experts must have after completing their training. It is aimed at everyone involved in the training or examination of these experts or practising the profession. Experts within the meaning of the guideline are persons who deal with the determination of vehicle values – replacement value, residual value, market value, dealer purchase value, dealer sales value and the valuation of reduced value are named – and further with values relevant to claims settlement, repair cost calculations, the assessment of unit damage and repairs, plausibility and compatibility checks, preservation of evidence, and calculations and valuations based on files.

The table of contents shows the architecture. Section 5 regulates training and education, with basic training, further training and practical work. Section 6 sets the entry requirements: personal, driving licence, general and specific educational requirements. Section 7 concerns the qualification of speakers, section 8 the quality features of training facilities including the VDI training partnership. Section 9 is the most extensive: the teaching and learning content, divided into knowledge of the activities of these experts, of damage assessment, of vehicle technology and repair, of repair cost calculation, of vehicle valuation, of other relevant values, of the preparation of expert reports as methodological and psychological professional knowledge, of legal and insurance law, and of ethics.

Sections 10 to 16 form the verification and maintenance part: examination with exam content, procedure, aids and consequences; confirmation and certificate; further training; review of expert services with quality assurance and periodic inspection; conformity assessment body with examination committee; impartial fulfilment of tasks; and consideration of previous and other qualification certificates. Anyone reading the guideline therefore finds a complete cycle from entry requirement to periodic review, and in every one of these sections the subject is the person.

According to its introduction, Part 2 sees itself as a contribution to the creation of a standardised professional profile. It describes the present situation soberly: there is no standardised access to the profession, but rather public appointment and swearing-in by appointing bodies, certifications by DAkkS-accredited certification bodies on the basis of DIN EN ISO/IEC 17024:2012, in-house training and examination at expert organisations and large offices, and alongside these, certifications by non-accredited bodies and practice without any proven professional qualification.

The guideline changes nothing about this situation in legal terms. In an interview published on vdi.de on 26 May 2025, Gunnar Stark, one of the experts involved, puts it this way: even if it is not yet a professional profile in legal terms, a basis has been created that allows a uniform line. For the injured party in a claim, little changes for the time being. The VDI itself reports that the 63rd German Council on Jurisdiction in Traffic in Goslar on 29 and 30 January 2025 reaffirmed the demand for a statutory professional code and highlighted Part 2 as a suitable basis for future legislation. A basis for a law is not yet a law.

What the guideline offers instead is a conformity procedure. According to the VDI, experts can have their conformity with Part 2 certified by a conformity assessment body; IfS GmbH für Sachverständige, ZAK-Zert GmbH and IQ-ZERT GmbH & Co. KG are named. Those who demonstrate conformity are entered in a register of experts under VDI-MT 5900 Part 2. Examinations are not conducted by the training providers but by the conformity assessment bodies. For training participants the VDI names as entry requirements an educational level of at least qualification level 6, language level C1 of the Common European Framework of Reference and a valid category B driving licence.

Section 16 of the guideline concerns the consideration of previous and other qualification certificates, and for this the VDI has described a procedure with a clear deadline on its website. Vehicle experts can have their conformity with Part 2 certified if they are publicly appointed and sworn under § 36 GewO or § 91 HwO, or if they are recognised by a DAkkS-accredited certification body under DIN EN ISO/IEC 17024 as certified experts for motor vehicle damage and valuation.

There are two further routes. Experts without these qualifications can demonstrate conformity if they have at least ten years of relevant professional activity, can prove it and have it confirmed that they meet the content of Part 2. Or they have completed the training described in the guideline and passed an examination at a conformity assessment body under section 10.

The point that belongs in an office's calendar: according to the VDI, the recognition procedure can be applied for in writing within a transitional period of two years from the first day of the month in which the final version was published, and this arrangement ends on expiry of 31 January 2027. Anyone wishing to transfer an existing qualification into the register therefore has until the end of January 2027. For Part 3 “Accident analysis” a separate, simplified procedure applies with a transitional period of five years until 31 March 2029.

In the overview of the series on vdi.de, next to Part 2 of 1 February 2025 there is a second entry: VDI-MT 5900 Part 2 “Experts in automotive and road transport – Damage and valuation” dated 1 October 2026. The detail page of this issue gives October 2026 as the publication date, likewise 44 pages, likewise German and English, and an abstract that matches the 2025 issue word for word. What changes in substance is not described on vdi.de; a table of contents for the new issue was not linked there at the time of this article. Anyone relying on Part 2 should therefore, from October 2026, state the issue they refer to and check section numbers against the document then available.

The series is growing. Part 3 “Accident analysis” has applied since 1 April 2024, Part 4 “Assisted, automated and connected driving” since 1 October 2024. As an expert recommendation, VDI-EE 5900 Part 3.1 on the performance and documentation of crash and driving tests in accident reconstruction is listed for 1 August 2026. As projects, the VDI lists Part 2.1 “Classic vehicles” and Part 2.2 “Caravans and motorhomes” with possible publication in April 2027, and Part 3.2 “Recording of road accidents” for June 2027.

For experts who value classic cars, Part 2.1 is the relevant process. According to the VDI press release of 18 March 2026, the term “classic vehicles” was chosen deliberately to include modern enthusiast vehicles alongside historic ones. The competences the part is to describe include reliable determination of vehicle identity, evaluation of documents and historical sources, market knowledge and sound valuation, assessment of condition, damage and originality, court-proof preparation of reports and uniform technical terminology. The distinction that already applies today is described in our article on classic vehicle valuation.

Here is the sentence that is so often missing: no part of the VDI-MT 5900 series deals with software, digital tools or artificial intelligence in the preparation of expert reports. The table of contents of Part 2 has teaching content on report preparation as methodological and psychological professional knowledge, aids only in connection with the examination, and nowhere a section on text drafts, assistance systems or automated evaluation. Part 1 mentions the digitalisation, automation and networking of vehicles as an example of the technical progress that makes the expert's mediating role more important – that is, as a property of the object being appraised, not as the appraiser's way of working. Part 4 deals with assisted, automated and connected driving, that is, vehicle technology.

This is not a gap one could hold against the guideline; it simply did not ask itself the question. But it is a reason not to cite it as evidence for something on which it is silent. Anyone who writes that an AI-assisted draft is “in the spirit of VDI 5900” or “VDI 5900-compliant” asserts a statement the guideline does not make. That applies to us too: on its own homepage, DIAVAG described human release as a principle “in the spirit of VDI 5900”. Only the weaker sentence is accurate: the guideline requires a qualified person, and in each of its sections responsibility for findings, valuation and text lies with that person. Which tool the first text draft comes from is of no concern to it.

The question of what actually applies legally when AI assistance is used is answered not by the VDI guideline but by the European AI Regulation, which we have placed in context in a separate article on the EU AI Act for experts. Keeping the two levels cleanly apart – qualification of the person here, regulation of the tool there – is the only reading that holds up in court and towards clients.

Three things can be derived directly from the text of the guideline and the VDI's information. First, the deadline: anyone wishing to transfer an existing qualification into the Part 2 register applies to a conformity assessment body by 31 January 2027. Second, the citation: from October 2026 two issues of Part 2 with the same abstract exist; a report or a proof of qualification that relies on the guideline names the issue. Third, the limit: the guideline is a yardstick for the person, not for the software. An office working with a drafting tool gains no conformity from it and loses none; what remains decisive is who checks, who values and who signs.

For the way of working this means: the traceability of every finding, which Part 2 demands under the heading of preservation of evidence and in its teaching content on report preparation, must be established by the expert personally, regardless of whether the text was produced at the desk or in a drafting system. We have described the underlying principle under No value without a source.

DIAVAG is a software platform for experts. It employs no appraisers of its own and produces no reports; it provides capture, drafting and delivery under the expert's own brand. A software product can neither hold nor confer conformity with VDI-MT 5900. It can only ensure that the qualified person checks and releases every draft before it leaves the office, and that every statement in the draft goes back to a captured field.