Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2017-06-08
Buyer: University of Southampton
Country: UK
Region: Hampshire and Isle of Wight
Contract type: Supplies
CPV classification: 32344110 | 32583000 | 48000000 | 48100000 | 48170000

Technical requirements: Soft Market Testing Exercise in Relation to the Procurement of an Automated Lecture Recording Subtitling System.
The University of Southampton is currently exploring a range of options to meet its need for automated subtitling of lecture video recordings. The University is keen to explore all options that may be currently available in the marketplace.
Interested parties are invited to complete and return the Questionnaire, deadline for the receipt of completed Questionnaires is 26.6.2017 (12:00 noon). Responses received as part of this exercise shall be used to help shape the University's final specification of system requirements and scope any resulting procurement process.
Please Note: This soft market exercise is intended to allow interested organisations with appropriate experience to outline their views and provide impartial information to the University with no commitment to themselves or the University. This is not a call for competition at this stage.
The University of Southampton is currently exploring a range of options to meet its need for automated subtitling of lecture video recordings. The University is keen to explore all options that may be currently available in the marketplace.
Students use videos of lectures to revisit taught content. Some groups of students benefit from subtitles on videos, especially those with additional learning needs or with English as an additional language (EAL). Lectures are recorded using Panopto.
The University is conducting soft market testing for an automated subtitling system for lecture video recordings that must include the following:
— A high degree of transcription accuracy in real-world scenarios (including a range of acoustics, voices, accents and background noise).
— Ability to cope with ~55k lecture recordings per annum, with a processing time limited to 12 hours per recording.
— Ability to cope service approximately ~1m hours of video per annum (or integration with existing services that provide this) and scalable to support future growth beyond this.
— Ability to integrate with existing University services to give an excellent student experience (e.g. Blackboard, Panopto, Banner etc.).
The University is utilising an electronic tendering tool (In-Tend: https://in-tendhost.co.uk/universityofsouthampton) to manage this soft market testing exercise and to communicate with participating organisations.
Participating organisations are advised that there will be no hard copy documents issued to organisations and all communications with the University including the submission of soft market testing questionnaires will be conducted via the In-Tend portal. Regular monitoring of the portal is the responsibility of the participating organisation.
If you are not already registered as a supplier with the University of Southampton, you will need to register in In-Tend in order to access the tender documentation.
Once you have logged in: click on ‘Tenders’; locate the relevant project; and click ‘View Details’. Once you are in the project screen, you will be able to register your company against the project and access all documentation by clicking ‘Express Interest’.