Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2021-04-27
Buyer: Newry Mourne and Down District Council
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 32400000 | 32410000 | 32420000 | 32430000 | 32500000
Estimated value: 13771085 GBP
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: Υπηρεσίες τεχνολογίας των πληροφοριών: παροχή συμβουλών, ανάπτυξη λογισμικού, Διαδίκτυο και υποστήριξη
Newry, Mourne and Down District Council is the host organisation for the Full Fibre Northern Ireland (FFNI) Consortium.
FFNI was awarded a grant of GBP 15 000 000 from the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s Wave 3 Local Full Fibre Network Programme. This is supplemented by other sources of funding, including DCMS Rural Gigabit Connectivity grant funding and Consortium Member and Customer funding.
FFNI’s Gigabit Capable Fibre project recognises that the provision of high quality, reliable high-speed connectivity is a necessity for a 21st century economy and society. FFNI is therefore seeking to future proof its own network connectivity requirements for the next 20 years or more through the installation of gigabit capable digital infrastructure services.
Newry, Mourne and Down District Council (The Council) hosts the Full Fibre Northern Ireland (FFNI) Consortium and is procuring services on behalf of the Consortium Members and other public sector customers.
This procurement is one of several that will be operated by the Council on behalf of the customers, dividing the total requirement into smaller collections of sites.
The Council wishes to procure a supplier of Gigabit-Capable Fibre connectivity services that will underpin wide area network connectivity to customer sites.
FFNI’s Gigabit Capable Connectivity Project is part-funded by the Department for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport (DCMS) through Wave 3 of its Local Full Fibre Network Programme (LFFN). It may also be part-funded by the DCMS Rural Gigabit Connectivity (RGC) Programme, and by other sources of funding.
The Council requires the supplier to design, build and operate the services over the duration of the contract.
The Council wishes to procure replacement access circuits in the form of Point-to-Point (P2P) dark fibre, or virtual equivalent circuits (Tail Circuit Services) to customer locations across the Consortium Members’ administrative areas.
These infrastructure services will be procured over the long term, from 20 to 30 years or more. It is anticipated that through the potentially large number of connected sites, economies of scale may be realised through aggregation, leading to innovative and cost-effective solutions from the market.
The customers intend to separate the provision of these infrastructure services from the provision of their Wide Area Network (WAN) services. Their WAN managed services will be delivered through the arrangements with existing WAN suppliers, or will be separately procured.
The supplier may provide all elements of the Solution itself or may combine commodity services and products from telecoms providers, services from subcontractors, and its own tools, services and expertise, to provide the Solution.
The supplier will provide a service management function to manage proactively the availability of the solution to agreed service levels, and to provide prompt remedial action in the event of failure. All aspects of the service should be compliant with the relevant security, information management and regulatory requirements.
All bids must provide dark fibre (or equivalent) gigabit-capable fibre circuits that meet the requirements described in Requirement 1 of the Volume 2 Requirements document.


Winner: Fibrus Networks Ltd
Award value: 13771085
Number of bids: 3