Thames Water has gone out to tender with a framework contract for IT and systems integration worth up to £200m over a five year period which includes the selection of a System Integrator for the Customer Relationship Management and billing tool currently being implemented for its retail, non-household business.

The water company is looking to appoint a maximum of eight suppliers to the framework agreement which is split into two lots

Lot 1. The establishment of a Framework Agreement for Application Development and System Integration work.

Lot 2. The selection of a System Integrator for the Customer Relationship Management and Billing tool being implemented for TW's Retail, Non-Household business.

Under Lot 1, suppliers will implement new business applications and associated processes, undertake major changes to current and legacy applications and deliver associated infrastructure solutions over the next two to five years. The total spend going through the framework has been estimated at over £200m over five years, with projects ranging in value from £0.5m to £75m.

The work will include all facets of IS project delivery, system integration and associated services for new or legacy systems

Suppliers securing framework agreements would become part of the Thames Water IS Development Pool which would not give suppliers any guarantee of work, but would enable them to bid for individual projects of work over the forthcoming two to five years. The majority of individual projects will be sourced under the framework via competitive tendering.

Thames Water requires a financial annual turnover of £125 million for companies to qualify as bidders.

Lot 2 - TW Retail Non-Household - covers the upcoming competitive market in 2017 and requires integration of a new CRM and Billing system(s) to enable the billing and relationship management for business customers receiving water and wastewater services. TW are seeking the integration of system(s) to deliver the following core capabilities for its retail business:

• Prospect to sale, contract capture and account management
• Pricing and development of products and services
• Bill issue, read to cash, collections (accounts receivable) and payment management
• Debt and Credit management incorporated into a billing system
• Core customer interactions - inbound / outbound contact (queries, complaints, issue resolution) and customer data management
• E-functionalities (e.g e-orders, e-billing, webapps capabilities, etc.)
• Managing initiation of non-primary offerings: trade effluent & other value add products and services
• Reporting, analytics and consumption/benchmarking analysis,
• Interfacing with internal corporate systems,
• Interfacing and reconciling with market operator,
• Purchasing of wholesale services and reconciliation of wholesale and retail charges,
• Interfacing with external market registration systems and other third parties.

It is anticipated that the system(s) will be required to calculate and bill charges for at least 250,000 customers across at least 340,000 sites and their associated measurement/usage data, for a number of products and services. Thames Water says that system will also need to be flexible to meet the changing requirements of the market and scalable to support increases in customer volumes, in line with the business retail market in the UK.

Any agreement awarded for Lot 1 would be for an initial duration of 2 years, with options to extend annually up to a maximum overall term of 5 years.

Separate tenders for Tideway Tunnel IT contract

Thames Water has also separately gone out to tender for a single IT Supplier for delivery of its IT Infrastructure, Helpdesk and Desktop Services on the Tideway Tunnel project, together with a contract for a Common Data Environment (CDE) for the exchange, coordination, compliance and storage of data.

The Thames Tideway Tunnel (TTT) is a significant infrastructure asset which will be delivered through a regulated Infrastructure Provider (IP). The project aims to deliver a single IT Supplier for delivery of its IT Infrastructure, Helpdesk and Desktop Services with a number of key objectives, including:

• Move the current technology estate from an operationally focused delivery model to that of a service focused delivery organisation;
• Move to a consumption based pricing model whereby TTT Ltd only pay for what is used;
• Deliver services on time, to quality and within budget;
• Deliver services that utilise standards based commodity services;
• Minimise the occurrences of major incidents and system downtime;
• Ensure that all new IT investments represent good value for money;
• Achieve positive average end-user service desk satisfaction level;
• Achieve a positive satisfaction rating from senior stakeholders when surveyed;
• Deliver a secure environment to ISO27001:2013 standards that is certifiable to that level;
• Deliver a Disaster Recovery capability for the business critical systems

Estimated value of the services is over the EU threshold but Thames says the actual value of the contract will be subject to tender proposals received.

Duration of the services is expected to be approximately up to 3 years starting in November with completion in March 2017 with the potential for 2 annual 1 year extensions. The intention is to invite between 3-5 applicants to tender.

The CDE contract will be used to exchange a variety of data entities (including drawings, BIM models, setting-out data, correspondence, reports, financial cost data, risk register data, images, and programmes) initially between the Project Managers and contractors.

The package will involve the hosting (if required), design, implementation, maintenance and support of the CDE with relevant skills and resources to fulfil the project's needs.

The implementation phase of the project is expected to commence from October 2014 and delivered no later than March 2015, with ongoing support and maintenance until 2023.

Visit the tenders section of Waterbriefing to download tender documentation.