Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2020-07-10
Buyer: The Secretary of State for the Home Department, Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (ESMCP)
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 48100000 | 72212100: Industry specific software programming services | 72212510
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: The supplier is a provider of integrated command and control system (ICCS) to the UK 3ES. This contract is to enable their services (as deployed to the supplier’s UK 3ES customers) to be upgraded to work with the new Emergency Services Network.
This procurement seeks to establish a contract between the supplier as a vendor of integrated communications control systems (ICCS) software to 3ES Organisations and the Home Office, specifically the Emergency Services Mobile Communications Programme (‘ESMCP’ or the ‘Programme’), for the provision of software development and supporting services.
In summary, the service requirements are concerned with the development of a compatible ICCS product upgrade that enables the supplier’s control room ICCS product(s) (as deployed to the supplier’s UK 3ES customers) to interface to ESN, for the minimum subset of Kodiak 9.0, 9.1 and Kodiak 10.0 (K10) features as set out in the contract schedules.
• development of an ICCS solution, compatible with ESN Kodiak 10.0, compliant with the control rooms ICD, ITRD and protocol ICDs, and the 3GPP standards referenced within the contract documentation;
• functional, non-functional and end-to-end integration testing of the control room ICCS in the Motorola/EE reference and/or production mirror environments;
• NATS certification of the control room ICCS against Kodiak 10.0 for a minimum set of Kodiak 9.0, 9.1 and 10.0 features as set out in the contract documentation;
• test and acceptance of an ESN compatible ICCS at a technical pilot control room site, connected to ESN Production via DNSP and UO-based firewall (requires NATS and ESN code of connection);
• maintenance and support for the ESN compatible ICCS at a technical pilot control room site, on a non-critical, Monday-Friday, 9-5 basis.
This procurement was conducted pursuant to the negotiated procedure without prior publication, under Article 32 of Directive 2014/24/EU. Having taken legal advice, for the reasons set out below, the authority's awards this contract under Article 32 paragraph 2(b)(iii) as the services being procured can be provided only by the awardee who alone has the necessary proprietary intellectual property rights required to be licensed under the contract. There is no reasonable alternative to the awardee in the circumstances.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department requires the Integrated Communications and Control Solution (ICCS) used by various ESN users’ (ESN Users) to interface with ESN’s push to talk (PTT) application, Kodiak. The development is to commence with integration for the minimum subset of Kodiak 9.0, 9.1 and 10 features, with a view to subsequently migrating to Kodiak 11 and potentially other future releases as necessary to support the delivery of ESN.
The ESN Users had previously contracted with their ICCS vendor to upgrade the ICCS to interface with Wave7000, the former PTT application used by ESN which work the Secretary of State for the Home Department funded through grants. As a result of the recent reset of the Programme, the ESN solution has moved from Wave7000 to Kodiak, meaning that any investment in and development of a Wave7000 interface was lost.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department, therefore, concluded that, to meet the Programme timetable and to avoid duplicating costs, it would contract directly with the ICCS vendors to upgrade their solutions to Kodiak.
The contracts between the ESN Users and the awardee are personal to the parties and subject to the intellectual property right (IPR) in their ICCS. It would not be possible to appoint a third party to develop the awardee’s ICCS. As a result, it is not possible for a third party to provide the Kodiak SD services.
The awardee is the only control room supplier that can provide the Kodiak SD services to its ICCS. The awardee owns the IPR in ICCS and will not allow a third-party access to the source code/background IPRs. As the Secretary of State for the Home Department cannot force the control room suppliers to grant access to their IPRs, it is not possible to contract with a third party to provide the Kodiak SD Services. An open procurement by competition for the Kodiak SD Services would be futile as only the Awardee could win a competition to provide the Kodiak SD services to its CR solution.
There are no reasonable alternatives to the award of the contract to the awardee. If the ESN Users were to amend their current control room contract it would result in same control room supplier being awarded the contract, i.e. the awardee would remain the same but the issuer would vary. The outcome is therefore unchanged and as noted above, this alternative would delay the delivery of the program. There is also substantial risk of duplication of costs across all Users in this scenario.


Winner: Frequentis AG
Number of bids: 1