Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2017-08-02
Buyer: Manchester City Council
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 48800000 | 72222000: Information systems strategic planning services | 72300000 | 72500000 | 72900000
Submission deadline: 2017-08-31
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: Manchester City Council's Data Centre Strategy defines the migration from the existing Council-owned single data centre to 2 new co-location facilities providing a robust and resilient disaster recovery solution to meet tight business RPO and RTO across a range of services and applications.
The Council requires 2 industry leading co-location data centre facilities in the Manchester area to host a total of 20 racks split across both locations for an initial 3 year period. In addition, the successful supplier will provide migration services to assist the Council moving out of the existing data centre.
Manchester City Council's Data Centre Strategy defines the migration from the existing Council-owned single data centre to 2 new co-location facilities providing a robust and resilient disaster recovery solution to meet tight business RPO and RTO across a range of services and applications.
The Council requires 2 industry leading co-location data centre facilities in the Manchester area to host a total of 20 racks split across both locations for an initial 3 year period. In addition, the successful supplier will provide migration services to assist the Council moving out of the existing data centre.
The Council has some in house skills to migrate systems from the existing data centre to the two new data centres. These resources are limited in number and have existing commitments to business as usual service provision. Professional services are therefore required to bolster the Council's migration team — this work will include physical hardware migrations, virtual machine migrations and associated networking, operating system and application configuration changes.
A new network infrastructure will be installed in the 2 new data centres — the design, supply, implementation and configuration of this network infrastructure is outside of the scope of this tender.
The Council's existing data centre is approximately 6 years old and includes industry standard data centre infrastructure of a good quality standard — UPS, generators, electrical switchgear, air conditioning and rack units. Once migrations to the new data centres are complete the Council wishes to dispose of this equipment in the most economically advantageous manner and decommission the data centre in readiness for handing back the facility to the landlord.
The Council is using the e-business portal known as The Chest (www.the-chest.org.uk) to conduct the procurement exercise. To gain access to the invitation to tender documents, tenderers will need to register their company details at the above website.
Once registered, tenderers will be emailed a login and password which will allow them to gain access to the Invitation to Tender documents.
Tenderers will need to electronically submit their completed tender documents and accompanying documentation via the Chest on-line portal by 11:00 on 31.8.2017, as referred to in IV.2.2) above. Any supplier questions/queries will also need to be submitted via The Chest portal, using it's messaging facility.
Under the agreement the provider will be required to support the Council's economic and social regeneration objectives. Therefore selection and award criteria, specification requirements and contract performance conditions may relate in particular to social and environmental considerations.
The Council will incorporate a minimum 10 calendar day standstill period at the point information on the award of the contract is communicated to tenderers. This period allows unsuccessful tenderers to seek further debriefing from the Contracting Authority before the Contract is entered into. Applicants have 2 working days from notification of the award decision to request additional debriefing and that information has to be provided a minimum of 3 working days before the expiry of the standstill period. If an appeal regarding the award of a contract has not been successfully resolved, the Public Contracts Regulations provide for aggrieved parties who have been harmed or are at risk of harm by a breach of the rules to take action in the High Court (England, Wales and Northern Ireland). Any such action must be brought promptly (generally within 3 months). Where a contract has not been entered into the Court may order the setting aside of the award decision or order the Authority to amend any document and may award damages. If the contract has been entered into, the Court may only award damages.