Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2018-10-06
Buyer: Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 48140000
Estimated value: 30000000 GBP

Technical requirements: In order to deliver increased functionality in the management of train control in the South East area, Network Rail aims to deploy a Traffic Management (TM) system on the Sussex areas of the South East Route and on the East London Line to improve train performance (PPM, reliability, recovery from service perturbations, future proofing the technology used).
This is proposed to be achieved through a direct contract award to Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd for the extension of the existing Thameslink Traffic Management System deployment.
There are 6 geographically isolated areas (including the East London Line) covered in South East Traffic Management scheme that are small standalone sections that directly interface with the existing Thameslink Traffic Management/control area currently under contract with Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd. Adding a different TM solution within the South East Route to cover these areas would result in the introduction of multiple operational fringe/technical edge case issues that could potentially cause significant additional degradation to PPM, significant additional workload and introduction of additional potential for error in route wide train service management. This is due to service managers operating across multiple systems simultaneously and sub-optimal cross-TM system journey planning as only a limited part of the overall journeys occur in the area covered by the additional TM system.
This is proposed to be achieved through a direct contract award to Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd for the extension of the existing Thameslink Traffic Management System deployment.
Network Rail requires improvements in performance and capacity that the deployment of a Traffic Management system is expected to achieve. The procurement represents additional supplies which is an extension to the boundary and functionality of the TM system currently being deployed by Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd for the Thameslink Programme. The TM system solution for the South East Route and the East London Line areas must be compatible with the signalling system as interface management is critical for safety and performance considerations. To obtain the software and associated application Programme for regulating algorithms from a supplier other than the current incumbent who originally supplied, installed and configured the system would result in network Rail purchasing supplies with different technical characteristics. Purchasing alternative systems and software would mean that the current technology platform delivered by Hitachi would then need to interface with a different traffic management system requiring modifications to the Hitachi platform, generating system integration and/or compatibility risks in terms of safety and performance as well as additional cost and timescale risks to Network Rail. In addition, if a different traffic management system was deployed, the maintenance and support for each of the differing systems would be carried out by different parties which would create difficulties in effectively supporting and maintaining each technology platform as a whole, including interface responsibility, a single point of accountability and liability. Network Rail therefore considers that a change in supplier in relation to the TM system and software would oblige Network Rail to purchase supplies with different technical characteristics which would result in incompatibility and/or disproportionate technical difficulties in the operation and maintenance of the different Traffic Management platforms.


Winner: Hitachi Rail Europe Ltd
Award value: 30000000