Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2020-08-31
Buyer: Defra Network eTendering Portal
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Competitive procedure with negotiation
CPV classification: 79961200
Submission deadline: 2020-10-06
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: The Environment Agency (EA) works to create better places for people and wildlife and support sustainable development. The EA is an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
The EA works to help save lives and protect the environment. It is a Category One responder and responds to thousands of incidents and potential incidents each year, including flooding, drought, pollution and waste fires across England. The EA seeks an outstanding supplier who will enable them to continue to use drones (UAV’s) to obtain real time information about what is happening on the ground; to help respond appropriately to an incident and to help better understand how to respond to incidents in the future.
The use of drones helps the EA meet their incident management strategy needs by quickly providing staff with the right information, to enable them to carry out their role in responding to incidents. By having this information, they can make better decisions, which will help protect peoples’ lives and livelihoods. The footage recorded by drones also helps the EA to learn from and prepare for future incidents.
The EA requires an incident management drone provider, who can provide a rapid response service that operates 24/7, 365 days a year, anywhere in England. The EA used drones an average of 30 times per year, over the last 2 years to help with incident response. However due to the unpredictability of incidents, call out frequency can vary year on year. The EA may also need to request drones for non-emergency situations such as training days. The service provider must be able to deploy operators with drones to an incident site, providing live streaming into the incident rooms, as well as providing photography and recordings of the ground.
The contract is primarily intended to meet the needs of the Environment Agency. The Agency also requires the successful bidder to provide the services on the same terms that are agreed as a result of this tender
To the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and its associated bodies including any Agencies and non-departmental public bodies and others (the Defra Group). A full list of the Defra Group can be found at:
As a UK based network the Environment Agency may require the successful bidder to provide elements of the services specified on the same terms to local authorities across the UK and to the Devolved Administration’s (DA’s).
(i) not to award or enter into any contract as a result of the procurement process commenced by the publication of this notice;
(ii) to make whatever changes it may see fit to the content and structure of the tendering competition;
(iii) to award one or more public contract(s) in relation to part only of the requirements covered by this notice; and/or
In no circumstances will the Environment Agency be liable for any costs incurred by the applicants/tenderers and their associated parties. Any expenditure, work or effort undertaken prior to contract award is accordingly a matter solely for the commercial judgment of potential applicants and the Environment Agency will not be responsible for any such expenditure.
Thank you for your interest in tendering for this requirement, you will need to access the documents through Bravo Solutions portal.
— click the ‘PQQs/ITTs Open To All Suppliers’ link (These are Pre-Qualification Questionnaires or Invitations to Tender open to any registered supplier);
— this will move the PQQ/ITT into your ‘My PQQs/My ITTs’ page (This is a secure area reserved for your projects only);
— click ‘My Response’ under ‘PQQ/ITT Details’, you can choose to ‘Create Response’ or to ‘Decline to Respond’ (please give a reason if declining);

Eligibility requirements: As per tender documents.