CONTRACT AWARD NOTICE – OFFICIAL JOURNAL

Section I: Contracting Authority

I.1)

Name, Address and Contact Point(s)

I.2)

Type of contracting Authority and Main Activity or Activities

Ministry or any other national or federal authority, including their regional or local sub-divisions National or federal agency/Office Regional or local Authority Regional or local Agency/Office Body governed by public law European Institution/Agency or International Organisation

General public services Defence Public order and safety Environment Economic and financial affairs Health Housing and community amenities Social protection Recreation, culture and religion Education

Section II: Object of the Contract

II.1)

Description

II.1.1)

Title attributed to the contract by the contracting authority

ICT Infrastructure Support.

II.1.2(a))

Type of works contract

II.1.2(b))

Type of supplies contract

II.1.2(c))

Type of service contract

II.1.2)

Main site or location of works, place of delivery or performance

II.1.3)

This notice involves a framework agreement

II.1.4)

Short description of the contract or purchase(s)

Technical computer support services. Cheshire Fire Authority ('The Authority') is currently reviewing the provision of its ICT Infrastructure Support Services. The expectation is to award a three year contract with options to extend.

Over the past year, The Authority's, ICT Department have been investing heavily into the network and server infrastructure to ensure we build an excellent foundation on which we can deliver the IT services required by a modern Fire and Rescue Service.

Much of this investment has been in modernising our core network with highly resilient and scalable CISCO hardware, rationalising and slimming down systems, and replacing end of life hardware.

We have also recently replaced our physical server infrastructure with virtual servers utilising Microsoft Hyper-V technology, and will shortly be expanding this infrastructure to enable us to continue to build on this virtual architecture.

During 2012 we will begin a programme of work to replace and upgrade our current WAN infrastructure to improve network speeds and increase resilience to all Fire Stations.

The ICT department at The Authority is a small, dedicated team of IT professionals primarily focused on supporting a desktop infrastructure to over 1 000 staff, developing in house software and supporting radio & telephone systems across the whole of Cheshire.

Due to its size, the department does not have the capacity to offer the level of support required to monitor & maintain a modern ICT server and LAN infrastructure, while continuing to provide support to its desktop users and develop in-house software. ICT staff are skilled in infrastructure support, and it is envisaged in-house staff would provide first line diagnostics to faults and require flexibility from the chosen supplier to allow them access to the infrastructure to do so. The chosen supplier should provide a solution to change management for fault resolution both by themselves and ICT Staff to ensure all changes are documented and auditable.

The Authority is looking for a single partner to provide support to cover our server and LAN infrastructure; providing pro active monitoring, fault diagnosis, configuration change and management, regular health checks and recommendations for future improvements.

The contract will provide a single point of contact for any issue arising on WAN, LAN, hardware and systems, removing the need for ICT staff to contact numerous vendors to resolve issues.

The chosen supplier should be working to ITIL V3 standard or equivalent, including service desk, incident management, change management and configuration management.

The required provision comprises of 3 elements, Physical Hardware (Server) Support, Systems Support and Network Infrastructure Support. The Authority's preferred solution is to award all 3 elements to one supplier; however, the Authority does reserve the right to split this provision into lots, of any combination.

The technical specification will include physical hardware (server) support, systems support, network infrastructure support, change management and control, disaster recovery and business continuity support and the undertaking of health checks.

II.1.5)

Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV)

II.1.6)

Contract covered by the government procurement agreement (GPA)

II.2)

Total final value of the contract(s)

II.2.1)

Total final value of the contract(s)

Section IV: Procedure

IV.1)

Type of procedure

IV.1.1)

Type of procedure

IV.2)

Award criteria

IV.2.1)

Award criteria

IV.2.2)

An electronic auction has been used

IV.3)

Administrative information

IV.3.1)

File reference number attributed by the contracting authority

430

IV.3.2)

Previous publication(s) concerning the same contract

Other previous publications

Section V: Award of contract

Contract No:

V.1)

Date of contract award:

V.2)

Numbers of offers received:

V.3)

Name and address of economic operator to whom the contract has been awarded

V.4)

Information on value of contract

V.5)

The contract is likely to be subcontracted

Short description of the value/proportion of the contract to be subcontracted

Section VI: Complementary Information

VI.1)

Contract related to a project and/or programme financed by community funds?

VI.2)

Additional Information

Suppliers must read through this set of instructions and follow the process to respond to this opportunity.

The information and/or documents for this opportunity are available on https://www.supply4nwfire.org.uk/delta You must register on this site to respond, if you are already registered you will not need to register again, simply use your existing username and password. Please note there is a password reminder link on the homepage.

Suppliers must log in, go to your Response Manager and add the following Access Code: ZN45GVJN8G. Please ensure you follow any instruction provided to you here.

The deadline for submitting your response(s) is 13.8.2012 13:00. Please ensure that you allow yourself plenty of time when responding to this invite prior to the closing date and time, especially if you have been asked to upload documents.

If you experience any technical difficulties please contact the Supply4NWFire eSourcing Helpdesk on call +44 8452707050 or email nwfire@delta-esourcing.com

To view this notice, please click here:

https://www.supply4nwfire.org.uk/delta/viewNotice.html?noticeId=38336998

GO Reference: GO-201395-PRO-5093393

VI.3)

Procedures for appeal

VI.3.1)

Body responsible for appeal procedures

Body responsible for mediation procedures

VI.3.2)

Lodging of appeals

VI.3.3)

Service from which information about the lodging of appeals may be obtained

VI.4)

Dispatch date of this Notice