Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2019-11-14
Buyer: Worcester City Council
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 72000000

Technical requirements: Υπηρεσίες τεχνολογίας των πληροφοριών: παροχή συμβουλών, ανάπτυξη λογισμικού, Διαδίκτυο και υποστήριξη
This is a call for a Soft Market Testing Exercise (SMTE) prior to the possible placement of an OJEU notice calling for a procurement. We expect to place the OJEU Notice during 2019/20 but it may differ significantly from the topics raised here: There is no guarantee that the OJEU Notice will be placed.
Should Worcester City Council (WCC) choose to conduct a procurement exercise in future this contract will offer a unique opportunity for a commercial software provider/developer to work with WCC to supply and develop an ambitious single business system solution to provide back office business support and management information across all environmental operations. It is the ambition of WCC to support all (or as much as possible) of it’s Environmental operations with one business system provided by one supplier and testing the feasibility and indicative costs of this ambitious project is the objective of this SMTE.
Should Worcester City Council (WCC) choose to conduct a procurement exercise in the future this contract will offer a unique opportunity to a commercial software provider/developer to work with WCC to supply and develop a single business system solution to provide back office business support and management information across environmental operations disciplines. It is the ambition of WCC to support all (or as much as possible) of it’s Environmental operations with one business system provided by one supplier and testing the feasibility and indicative costs of this ambitious project is the objective of this SMTE.
Cost savings for a cross cutting project of this type will be hard to quantify for some time to come so obvious identifiable efficiency improvements are paramount to the successful birth of this project.
Currently there is an array of legacy systems on various platforms, with limited integration between systems.
Integration and flexibility is the key to any new solution. Providing end to end management for routine work or a one off task is essential whether it is a daily work schedules for waste collection, a re route for a missed bin, broken glass emergency in a busy playground, street cleansing or a customer enquiry/transaction via any digital device. It is also essential that integration with other corporate systems such as Finance, GIS and HR is seamless.
Customer and employee access to a new environmental operations service system using any digital device at any time from anywhere is also of high importance.
Technology and working practices have advanced considerably over the last few years, the new solution should exploit new technology such as (but not limited to) in cab devices, intelligent bin tagging, digital storage on the cloud, remote team working communications and customers/employees using social media as viable communication channels.
Any solution should have comprehensive and flexible management information analysis at its heart with service provision performance indicators automatically recorded for consistency allowing informed management decisions.
All channels of customer contact ranging from face to face to digital wrist watches via a web portal should be managed transparently by a customer relations module with input and out put of communications tailored to the customers needs.
WCC will be interested to hear views on this project and to have non-binding discussions with any interested parties. Contact with WCC must, in the first instance be through the ProContract portal as defined in this PIN.
The Council is using the e-procurement portal known as the Due North Pro-Contract portal https://procontract.due-north.com to conduct this soft market testing exercise.
To gain access to the market testing documents, suppliers will need to register their company details at the above website. Once registered, suppliers will be emailed a login and password which will allow them to gain access to the procurement documents. Suppliers will need to search for the soft market testing invitation under Worcester City Council and then electronically submit an expression of interest and follow the online instructions to view the documents.