Scottish Water has gone out to tender with an intranet refresh project with estimated total value of £5 million.

The water company is looking to refresh its intranet and is seeking a technical partner to help develop, deliver and maintain the solution - which will be a cloud-based solution.

Scottish Water's existing intranet serves around 5000 employees. Contract partners and service providers also access intranet content, as well as colleagues from the water company's partners and supply chain.

It is expected that the new intranet will:

• Increase access for Mobile, Field & Frontline Workers: Emphasis on mobile functionality and engagement for frontline and field workers.
• Provide excellent User Experience (UX) & Visual Appeal: Focus on user experience and visual design.
• Provide advanced analytics capabilities to aid penetration of communication and support governance.
• Give efficient admin functionality to empower our Internal Comms team
• Improve information finding & knowledge management: Tools for locating information and managing knowledge, with strong M365 and SharePoint integration.
• Be excellent value for money: Cost-effective in delivery and ongoing product management.
• Be carbon neutral.

Key functionality Scottish Water would like to have is:

1. Content Management:

• effective content management of various media types,
• targeting of communications to groups and/or personas (specifically MS Groups),
• use of templates for accelerated creation and consistent output,
• admin functionality to manage content.
• exploits Microsoft365 as a foundation

2. Integration:

Integration with EntraID to help present a more personalised experience

3. Mobile and Tablet:

Great UX for mobile and tablet

4. Accessibility

Allow all SW colleagues to engage with the intranet easily and in a way that works for them.

5. Authentication

Work with Single Sign-on (with MFA) via EntraID (formally AzureAD)

Additional considerations:

The water company would like to introduce a product management approach to its intranet, meaning that the selected vendor would be engaged longer term to provide resource capability to a DevOps team so that the utility can both maintain and support intraits net, whilst also exploiting new functionality and enabling adaptability into the future. 

Scottish Water envisages an 8-year relationship with a review point mid contract. The firm is committed to being NetZero by 2040 and would also like all digital services to be carbon neutral.

The contract will include provision to allow the selected partner to work on future intranet, information hub and information portal work if the need arises.

The company wants its admin users to be able to fully exploit the solution and excellent training within the project and ongoing is essential. Scottish Water says this may take the form of screen based and on occasion in person training.

Initial contract duration is 96 months

The water company is looking to put a framework agreement in place with a single supplier.

Time limit for receipt of tenders or requests to participate is 17 March 2025 – click here to access the tender doumentation.