Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2019-03-20
Buyer: Bristol City Council
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 48200000 | 72700000 | 73100000
Estimated value: 900000 GBP

Technical requirements: This contract is for the extension (build, integration and operation) of an existing hyper fast fibre network - the Open Programmable City network or “OPC network”, in which the extended network, referred to as the Open Programmable City Region network or “OPCR Network”, will support new projects and new generation technology research and experimentation. The OPC network is a private network comprising assets that are owned by the council and operated by BristolIsOpen Limited (“BIO”) – a special purpose vehicle and JV Co established by the council and University of Bristol. The OPC network serves as an R&D testbed aimed at enabling researchers, entrepreneurs and other businesses to link research to product development, spinning out new services, software and IP. The laying of new fibre and server racks, and the procurement of the OPCR hardware is outside the scope of the contract and is subject to separate procurement processes
The council believe competition is absent for technical reasons and reasons in relation to the protection of BIO’s exclusive rights.
Technical Architecture - There is no comparable or compatible third party network in place that could be used as a substitute for the OPC network. If such alternative network did exist, there would be increased legal, commercial and technical complexity/risks around integrating with it, including reliance on third party owned infrastructure to deliver the council’s objectives under OCPR network extensions and R&D projects, where the assets and fibre are owned by the council.
Build and Integration - BIO has developed and customised the OPC network and services to a high degree, making it very difficult for a third party integrator to become conversant with it. BIO was also commissioned to design the OPCR network nodes, active network requirements and equipment locations. As much of the intellectual property (IP) in the current network architecture, design and operation, is held by BIO, integration would require the close co-operation of BIO (increasing integrator costs) and would take longer, before build and integration could take place. This would provide no benefit to the council and would place a third party build / integrator at a distinct commercial disadvantage against BIO, particularly in terms of impact on delivery time, cost and increased risk of integration and operational failure.
Availability of Assets and IP Issues – BIO manage and operate the OPC network and owns the know-how and much of the IP associated with the design, implementation and operation of the OPC core network. This includes a considerable amount of IP invested in the OPC architecture, design and configuration and developing OpenStack cloud services. In addition BIO has expertise in virtualisation, distributed networking, edge computing, IoT, AI, data analytics required to support the OPCR project, and has largely customised the current OPC operating environment. The disclosure of BIO’s know-how and IP would undermine the security of the network and its commercial interests. As BIO will continue to operate the OPCR network, using a third party build / integrator could create gaps in BIO’s know-how and problems in ongoing service management and the assumption of risk / liability by BIO. It follows that BIO is uniquely positioned to provide all of the build, integration and operation services for the OPCR project.


Winner: Bristol Is Open Ltd
Award value: 900000