Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2019-07-15
Buyer: Northern Gas Networks
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 72416000: Application service providers
Estimated value: 417320 GBP

Technical requirements: The street manager application is a communications channel for street and roadworks which is being implemented by the Department for Transport. This must be used by all local highway authorities and utility companies. The App will transform planning, management and communication of street and road works through open data and intelligent services to minimise disruption and improve journeys for the public.
Symology have designed an interface manager system that will deliver the data in whichever format the local highway authorities are set up to receive it in, this circumnavigates the challenge of local highway authorities migrating from their current systems to street manager at differing times. Northern Gas Networks intend to use the interface manager system designed by Symology.
The street manager application is a communications channel for street and roadworks which is being implemented by the Department for Transport. This must be used by all local highway authorities and utility companies. The App will transform planning, management and communication of street and road works through open data and intelligent services to minimise disruption and improve journeys for the public.
Symology have designed an interface manager system that will deliver the data in whichever format the local highway authorities are set up to receive it in, this circumnavigates the challenge of local highway authorities migrating from their current systems to street manager at differing times. Northern Gas Networks intend to use the interface manager system designed by Symology.
The street manager application is a programme of works being implemented by the Department for Transport, that all local highway authorities and utility companies must use as communication channels for street and road works.
The Department for Transport envisage street manager transforming the planning, management and communication of street and road works through open data and intelligent services to minimise disruption and improve journeys for the public.
At a technical level; this change will force all stakeholders to migrate from EToN (electronic transfer of notices) based systems over to API (application programable interfaces) systems.
Northern Gas Networks (NGN) have reviewed the various options and the recommend approach is to extend our contract with Symology and upgrade to the latest ‘managed’ version of Insight (currently 3.7.3).
Symology have designed an interface manager system that will deliver the data in whichever format the local highway authorities are set up to receive it in. This circumnavigates the challenge of local highway authorities migrating from their current systems to street manager at differing times. The interface manager system will be maintained by Symology allowing NGN to continue to use insight as we currently do in an almost seamless manner. The upgrade will be done primarily by Symology.
The technical reason for absence of competition in the market is that NGN would not be able to utilise a specific application (NRSWA application) which was built specifically for NGNs operational resources to update the local highway authorities with site progress. The NRSWA app was purposely built to interface with Insight, which is a Symology product. If NGN were to consider an alternative solution and the NRSWA app was to go down, the risk would be that all field resource would need to revert back to manual reporting relating to street works, meaning that NGN would need to employ a full team to deal with the work involved.


Winner: Symology Ltd
Award value: 417320