Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2018-01-06
Buyer: Network Rail Infrastructure Limited
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 14000000 | 38221000 | 71300000

Technical requirements: This is intended as a briefing for GIS specialists with experience of interpreting mining information from paper records and creating future-proof spatial databases and user platforms. There is an expectation that suitably experienced companies will submit an expression of interest to carry out this work.
The UK has a wide range of mineral deposits which have been, and in some cases continue to be, exploited by a variety of mining methods determined either by the type and configuration of the mineral deposit or the technology available at the time of mining. The legacy of this mining activity is that there are numerous caverns, voids, broken ground, tunnels, shafts and adits in the vicinity of the railway. Underground workings, particularly where shallow, may collapse and cause surface settlement, and if this occurs within close proximity to the railway corridor it can have a significant impact on both the safety and performance of the railway.
A records modernisation project was undertaken in 2013 to digitise the extensive mining archive held by Network Rail. An adequate plan for best practice use of this digitised archive was not developed or implemented at the time. There are significant efficiency issues with records retrieval and the current cataloguing measures. A small portion of the records have been spatially referenced and are accurately portrayed on GIS. The records are interrogated daily, and are integral to network rail’s risk management strategy. The team currently uses an ArcGIS system.
The records include both plans and correspondence, which are interrogated by Network Rail for reporting purposes, including providing Construction Design Management 2015 (CDM) compliant pre-construction information for all significant projects carried out on the railway in mining areas. The Mining Team also update the records when site investigation or treatment of mineworkings is undertaken, or other information is acquired, as a consequence of this the archive is growing, becoming more cumbersome and ultimately unmanageable in its current format.
Currently there are approximately 80 000 plans that will require georeferencing and vectorising. There are around 14 000 correspondence files that need to be spatially catalogued, uploaded to the cloud computing system and hyperlinked.
The overall objective is to develop a spatial database that is a one stop shop for mining information relating to the railway, by transforming the archive held by Network Rail’s Mining Team, from an unstructured multi-platform system to a spatially accurate single platform entity.
— Collate all available mining information from Network Rail’s records that needs to be included in the spatial database.
— Georeferencing of all mine plans by identifying and fixing the geographic location of each plan within ArcGIS.
— The spatial database should be supplied on a platform that can host multiple users with a single administrator that is in compliance with Network Rail Information Security Protocols.
— A spatial catalogue for all correspondence records with required metadata and hyperlinks to the source (cloud computing platform), that is easily updated by administrator users.
Network Rail invites you to provide examples of completing prior work that is similar to this and potential ideas for the processes to be undertaken when designing and populating the geospatial database.
Network Rail requests that all organisations respond by 19.1.2018. Organisations wishing to express interest should register their interest in the first instance by providing the following information, via email, to the buyers email address listed and provide the following information.
Network Rail may decide to hold a pre-procurement market engagement event and any suppliers who express an interest in this opportunity will be invited to attend.
Any discussions which do occur will cease immediately should a formal competition ultimately be announced. Network Rail is committed to ensuring fairness, openness and transparency, and to follow EU procurement regulations. The Prior Information Notice is issued solely for the purpose of conducting pre-procurement market engagement and does not constitute any commitment to undertake any procurement in the future. Interested parties will not be prejudiced by any response or failure to respond to the PIN event and a response to this PIN does not guarantee any invitation to participate in this event or any future procurement.
This PIN does not constitute a call for competition to procure any services, supplies or works for any of the organisations mentioned in this PIN and they will not accept any proposals offered in response to this PIN. Network Rail is not liable for any costs, fees, or expenses incurred by any party in replying to or attending the PIN event. Any procurement of any services, supplies or works by Network Rail will be carried out strictly in accordance with the provisions of the Utilities Contracts Regulations 2016.