Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2025-01-13
Buyer: Fingrid Oyj
Country: FI
Region: FI1B1
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated with prior call for competition
CPV classification: 72268000: Software supply services
Estimated value: 464000 EUR

Technical requirements: Candidates willing to apply for the tendering process, must fill in the application for participation through the Cloudia procurement system in use by Fingrid Oyj (the Procurement System). The applications must include all the information mentioned in this document so that the Contracting authority is able to select the tenderers for the negotiated procedure.

Questions in English must be sent through the Procurement System. Questions raised in other ways or media cannot be answered. This ensures equal treatment of candidates.

Questions and answers will be published through the Procurement System. At publishing questions and answers are moderated so that the questioner's identity is not revealed. The answers will not reveal information that may endanger the Contracting authority ‘s data or IT-system security.
The candidate is obligated to take into account the questions and answers published, or any other information published on the Procurement System in assessing its participation in the tendering process.

Indicative schedule for the tendering process:
• 17.6.2024: Procurement Notification
• 4.7.2024: Participation acceptance
• 8.7. Preliminary Tender request
• 9.8.2024: Preliminary Tender deadline
• August-September 2024: Pre-Tender Negotiations inclusive of System Demonstrations
• September 2024: Final Call for Tenders based on negotiations
• October 2024: Final Tenders & Evaluation inclusive of System Demonstrations
• October 2024: Acceptance of winning final tender and contracting
• November 2024: Setup and implementation of tendered solution
• December 2024: Start of trading on the new marketplace

Before the negotiations, the Contracting authority reserves right based on its sole discretion to provide the tenderers with a preliminary call for tenders and a preliminary specification for the technical requirements. Upon completion of the negotiations, the Contracting authority shall request a binding tender from the tenderers based on the discussions and the negotiated terms and conditions.
Making an application, an offer or participating in the procurement in other ways will not be compensated to the companies. Procurement documents related to the procurement are available in English. If the company wants the documents in another language, the company is responsible for the translation and the costs involved. The procurement is carried out in English and no company translations will be regarded as official or binding.
The Contracting authority reserves the right to change the process and / or the timetable of the negotiated procedure or terminate the procurement at its own discretion. The above-mentioned procedure is indicative. 

Negotiation invitations will tentatively be submitted to the candidates and the initial negotiation period will be during August 2024. The Contracting authority negotiates separately with each candidate. Negotiations require the signing of an NDA  . 
During the negotiations, the call for tenders with its appendices will be further developed and the agreement including terms and conditions specified. The candidates should be well prepared for the negotiations by reading up on the tendering material sent to the candidate before the negotiations and sending the preliminary tenders by the proposed time schedule.

The negotiations may cover the following issues: 
• the objectives for both parties (at the start of the negotiations), 
• contents of the procurement, 
• pricing criteria, 
• contractual issues, 
• technical specifications,
• implementation schedules,
• possible tailor-made solutions, and 
• demo of the marketplace presented by the candidate. 

The Contracting authority will inform the candidates of the end of the negotiation round. Upon completion of the negotiations, the Contracting authority will update the preliminary call for tenders on the basis of the negotiations and aims to send the final call for tenders in September 2024. 

Binding tenders must be submitted according to the final call for tenders as will be agreed in the negotiation process.
Before the tenders are compared, the Contracting authority will check the compliance with the tender specifications. Tenders that are not compliant with the specifications shall be excluded from the tender comparison. Compliant tenders will be evaluated in accordance with the criteria indicated in the call for tenders. The Contracting authority aims to make the selection of the solution provider in October 2024. 
The Contracting authority reserves the right not to choose any of the submitted tenders and/or call off the procurement process.
This procurement targets a marketplace solution that will enable flexibility trading to fulfill DSO and TSO  needs for flexibility in order to manage network congestion. 

The marketplace solution should encompass a complete service-based portfolio of services and systems as services that in concert will allow for buyers and sellers to complete the entire trading process from resource registration to invoicing and payment of fulfilled trades and deliveries.  The solution will initially be deployed without integration to participant systems, requiring manual user interfaces or files for interaction. It is envisioned that at a later date integration will be considered, thus favouring solutions that can enable both options. 

The procurement and deployment are run by a joint DSO-TSO   project (overall project) formed by Helen Sähköverkko Oy and Fingrid Oyj, together later in the document “Contracting authority”. The aim of the overall project is to create favourable conditions for all parties to offer and utilize flexibility to solve real network congestion challenges on both TSO and DSO levels.  The project targets to enable testing of different congestion management methods to solve network overload situations both at the local and national level. This requires a suitable flexibility marketplace where the necessary trading can be carried out between the distribution and transmission level system operators and the owners of the flexibility resources. This market is not connected with, does not replace, and does not change reserve markets used for transmission level balancing.

The targeted market solution should be able to maintain and manage necessary flexibility products for both DSO and TSO use cases, allow for flexibility resource registration and enable DSOs and the TSO to decide on which one buys and uses the flexibility offered. 

More information on Appendix 1.


Winner: NODES AS
Number of bids: 2