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Emergency Services Network – Home Office places tender, deadline 16th of May 2014

Published: 
23 April, 2014

The tender is valued between £555m and £1.22bn.

The ESN will deliver integrated critical voice and broadband data services to all three emergency services (3ES) and other users throughout GB (England, Wales and Scotland). These services require a mobile communications network capable of providing the full coverage, resilience, security and public safety functionality required by the 3ES.

The ESN will replace those services delivered under current service contract(s). A number of these service contracts operate across the 3ES and other users. The new service contracts are expected to be awarded during 2015 to facilitate commencement of service delivery from late 2016 as existing service contracts begin to expire.

Coverage

The 3ES service will be required to cover (currently):

— Approximately 250,000 operational staff across the three emergency services (3ES);

— 44 Police and Crime Commissioners/services;

— 50 Fire and Rescue Authorities/services;

— 13 Ambulance Trusts;

— National Crime Agency;

— 3 non-Home Office Police Services (British Transport Police, Ministry of Defence Police, Civil Nuclear Constabulary);

— National Police Air Service.

ESN will also provide a service for more than just the 3ES however as 400+ Government and local public safety and other bodies use the current system and will potentially require the ability to use ESN. These other bodies may add up to approximately 50,000 additional connected devices, and may include the Central Government Departments, Non-Departmental Public Bodies and Agencies, Local Authorities in Great Britain and a number of charitable bodies and other organisations that interact with public safety bodies.

Value of the contract

The combined value of the 4 Lots is estimated to be between £555 m and £1.22bn depending on the extent of take up of services by other Government and local public safety bodies in addition to the 3ES and any extension options (exclusive of VAT).

Procurement structure

The procurement will be divided into 4 Lots that include integration, management, infrastructure and operating services, with each one including but not limited to the following contents:

  • Lot 1 – ESN Delivery Partner (DP) – transition support, cross-Lot integration and user support: a delivery partner to provide programme management services for cross-Lot ESN integration; programme management services for transition; training support services; test assurance for cross-Lot integration; and vehicle installation design and assurance.
  • Lot 2 – ESN User Services (US) – a technical service integrator to provide end to end systems integration for the ESN: provide public safety communications services (including the development and operation of public safety applications); provide the necessary telecommunications infrastructure; user device management; customer support; and service management.
  • Lot 3 – ESN Mobile Services (MS) – a resilient mobile network: a network operator to provide an enhanced mobile communications service with highly available full coverage in the defined Lot 3 area (in GB), highly available extended coverage over the Lot 4 telecommunications network, and technical interfaces to Lots 2 and 4).
  • Lot 4 – ESN Extension Services (ES) – coverage beyond the Lot 3 network: a neutral host to provide a highly available telecommunications network in the defined Lot 4 areas to enable the Lot 3 supplier to extend their coverage.

Rules for the bidding and winning of Lots

a) The Lot 1 service provider needs to be independent and is required to be impartial in its role, hence the legal entity leading a Lot 1 bid or a subcontractor in a bid for Lot 1 cannot bid as the legal entity leading (nor be a subcontractor in) a bid for any of Lots 2, 3 and 4.

b) The Lot 2 and Lot 3 service providers need to be independent to achieve resilience of supply for a critical service, therefore a legal entity leading a bid can win only win one of Lot 2 and Lot 3.

c) A legal entity leading a bid can win Lot 4 with one of Lot 2 and Lot 3.

d) A legal entity leading a bid for one Lot may appear as a subcontractor in another Lot, and subcontractors can appear in the value chain for any legal entity leading a bid (with the exception of the Lot 1 restriction, and Lot 2 and Lot 3 restrictions, stated above in rules a) and b) respectively), but may be asked by the legal entity leading a bid to comply with any ethical walls restriction that the Authority may in due course impose during the procurement process following the qualification stage if their supply is material to that bid and/or the subcontractor appears more than once in any given Lot or across Lots.

e) There is no other restriction on a bidding entity appearing in any Lot as a sub-contractor, other than those in rules a) to d) above.

For further information and to express an interest, suppliers can obtain the ESN Pre-Qualification Questionnaire (PQQ) and Contract Letting Process Agreement (CLPA) at www.esn.bravosolution.co.uk.

The official EU reference is 133654-2014




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