Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2018-07-28
Buyer: Transport for London (TfL), contracting through its subsidiary Transport Trading Limited (TTL)
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 63712700 | 63712710 | 72000000
Estimated value: 105000000 GBP
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: Υπηρεσίες τεχνολογίας των πληροφοριών: παροχή συμβουλών, ανάπτυξη λογισμικού, Διαδίκτυο και υποστήριξη
The Real Time Optimiser (RTO) System will replace TfL’s existing Urban Traffic Control (UTC) system and the Split Cycle Optimisation Technique (SCOOT) traffic signal optimiser. It will protect future road traffic operations in London, removing dependencies on end-of-life software and systems and providing enhanced functionality that is critical to reduce delays and improve journey time reliability. It will also act as an enabler for future technologies, providing the opportunity to work with an enhanced selection of data sources and predictive capability.
The initial development and implementation will deliver enhanced capability for London. The product will be developed further through a jointly agreed and managed product roadmap for the RTO System, ensuring that it evolves throughout the term of the contract to continue to meet the needs of London and other cities that may adopt it. TfL and the service provider will work together to commercially exploit the RTO System globally.
Development of the RTO System will be undertaken in London and in Dorset. Once implemented, the initial system will be run by TfL in London. Future joint deployments may be made around the world.
The procurement process has been conducted using the negotiated procedure without prior publication due to the absence of competition for technical reasons in accordance with Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) – see Section IV.1.1)
The RTO Contract will put TfL in a position where the capability to operate and strategically control London’s road network is safeguarded both now and into the foreseeable future. This will be accomplished through delivery and upkeep of the following: a tailor-made product for London’s road management requirements delivered into operation within London without any disruption, a regime of support centred on operational resilience, and a development roadmap rooted in operational delivery requirements.
The transition period of delivery will encompass development of the RTO System to meet TfL’s requirements, ensuring interoperability with any legacy systems, and full system and user testing. This final step will be followed by a phased approach to deployment, such that traffic control signals in London have their controlling influence switched from the old to the new systems whilst suffering no degradation in performance due to the cutover.
The new RTO System will require an extensive support provision, to be delivered primarily by the service provider but with coordinating activity from TfL’s Technology and Data team. This support will be necessary to cover times extended beyond normal office hours, reflecting the 24/7 nature of roads management within London.
The service provider will co-own the development roadmap for the RTO System with TfL, enabling commercial, strategic and operational strands to be woven together to successfully direct the lifecycle of the product. The initial roadmap will include developments covering optimisation technique improvements (including a longer term development building upon the current capabilities of SCOOT), making use of technology advances to evolve the RTO System to draw in the area of predictive modelling and making tangible improvements to operational processes – thus enabling more focussed attention being given to management of the road space.
Further development of the roadmap is likely to be influenced by evolving requirements brought by the proliferation of connected vehicles and the anticipated arrival of autonomous ones. In addition it is anticipated that the RTO System will be further developed to optimise the use of a widening range of data sources, enable even more efficient use of road network capacity and support the policy goals of TfL and London (embedded within the Mayor’s Transport Strategy) including improved air quality and safety related applications.
One further aspect of the RTO Contract will be the jointly managed exploitation business, whereby TfL and the service provider will work together to sell and deploy the RTO System around the world, sharing the financial returns.
The RTO Contract will initially run until 4.3.2028. However, the intention is for the contract to be co-terminus with the life and exploitation of the RTO System. This is estimated at circa 30 years based on TfL's use of its current UTC system and the SCOOT technology to date. On this basis, there are options within the contract to extend the initial term by one or more extension periods of up to four (4) years each.
There are no further formal options within the contract, however it should be noted that the operation of the Product Roadmap allows for further development of the RTO System to be undertaken.
The successful provider has offered the ‘Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT)’, taking both the quality of the solution and the price into account. The price per quality point (PQP) evaluation methodology has been used whereby each bidder’s total price (following calculation of the Net Present Value) has been divided by their total quality score to give a PQP, with the lowest PQP winning.
The Public Contracts Regulations 2015 allow for authorities to use the negotiated procedure without prior publication where the services in question can be supplied only by a particular economic operator where competition is absent for technical reasons provided no reasonable alternative or substitute exists and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement (Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii)).


Winner: Siemens Mobility Limited
Award value: 105000000
Number of bids: 2