Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2016-03-17
Buyer: Finnish Transport Agency
Country: FI
Region: MANNER-SUOMI
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 32500000 | 48000000 | 64200000 | 72000000
Estimated value: 5500000 EUR
Submission deadline: 2016-05-10
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: In accordance with the decision made by the Finnish Cabinet Committee on Economic Policy in January 2015 Finnish Transport Agency is planning to change railway voice communication network from GSM-R to the authority's existing TETRA network. Change is possible because Finland has got a CCS TSI exemption from European Commission (CCS TSI) in summer 2015. Therefore national regulations will be used and they allow the use of TETRA instead of GSM-R in railway safety related communication. This will not affect to the European railway interoperability because Finland is a railway island in EU (http://www.lvm.fi/en/-/virve-selected-as-radio-system-for-trains-797015).
The Finnish Transport Agency (FTA) invites tenders for URCA (Unified Railway Communication and Application) Service in accordance with Invitation to Tender and its Appendices.
The scope of the procurement is the URCA (Unified Railway Communication and Application) Service, which consists of the URCA system for railways' future proof radio network independent speech communication and the services thereto. The URCA system will form a basis for railways' safety related voice communications and applications. Scope includes also URCA system support services. URCA system also enables connections to the next generation railway radio network (presumably LTE (EPC/IMS)) which will be defined by European Railway Agency ERA.
Detailed technical descriptions and requirements of the URCA system can be found from the other URCA procurement appendix documents, particularly at appendices 3 and 4.
In addition, scope of procurement include all deliveries which are needed to deploy parts A, B and C. Requirements concerning the URCA project and deployment are presented at appendix 5 Project time schedule and acceptance period.
The URCA Core is the core of the system. Voice recording, subscriber management and network management functionalities are systems that support the core and there shall be a possibility to replace these systems at a later stage. In addition, scope includes options (Section 2.2), training and development relating to the URCA service.
The project will be followed through using project model and methods presented by the Contractor. The project should meet all the requirements (e.g. schedule) of the invitation to tender. The server platform of the URCA system must be placed in the FTA premises of Helsinki metropolitan area.
Further development subjects after the project in accordance with Invitation to Tender and its Appendices.
As part of the procurement and the deployment project, the Contractor shall arrange the URCA Demo as soon as possible.
The procurement includes options that the tenderer must offer and options that tenderer may offer (See Invitation to Tender section 2.2 Options and Appendix 3 Technical requirements). All options (and related hardware and software) that tenderers has to offer has to be priced at Appendix 2 (Price list).
The Parties may continue the Contract period by 3 separate 3-year terms upon a mutual agreement made before the end of the respective Contract term. The last 1 of the optional terms may also be shorter than 3 years.
The tenderer shall be registered in the professional or trade register of its domicile country (i.e. in Finland the Trade Register maintained by the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland).
The domicile country of the tenderer shall be a country that is a member of the World Trade Organizations Agreement on Government Procurement (GPA). If the tender is made as a group of economic operators this requirement shall be met by each of its members individually. If the tenderer operates outside of Finland but has a branch in Finland the requirement shall be met by in the domicile country as well as in Finland.
The tenderer annexes a trade register extract into the tender. The certification shall not be older than 3 months.
Payment of taxes and social security fees and exclusion criteria in the Act on procurement by entities operating in the water, energy, transport and postal services sectors and Act on Public Contracts.