Reservoir Act Compliance Enforcement application (RACE2)

The Environment Agency are looking to select a new, single vendor that can offer cloud hosting of the existing, OpenText Documentum-based Reservoir Act Compliance Enforcement platform as well as provide support and maintenance services plus additional professional services as and when needed to support future change projects.

The RACE application is a business-critical system used by the National Reservoir Safety Team to support the compliance and enforcement activities mandated under the Reservoirs Safety Act (1975) and the Flood and Water Management Act (2010). Currently there are approximately ten users in the National Reservoir Safety Team across England who are responsible for managing the relationship with engineers and reservoir owners, ensuring compliance and where appropriate undertaking enforcement action.

The Government commissioned the Balmforth review into the incident at Toddbrook reservoir in 2019. This has made a number of recommendations which will change the way the Reservoir Safety team works. The software the team uses will need to be updated in order to support the potential new ways of working.

Data records and documentation stored within the system are marked OFFICIAL and a handling caveat of SENSITIVE for a small subset of information marked OFFICIAL that requires special handling by staff (such as Reservoir Risk Flood Maps).

Following an options assessment, the decision has been made to continue operating the existing solution, which is delivered using OpenText's Documentum Content Management Platform. It will continue to be used by the Reservoir Safety and Enforcement Teams.

From a support and maintenance perspective, any new vendor of these services will be provided with documentation to describe the functionality and operation of RACE. It is expected that handover materials will be created to support any transition from the current provider to the new, including facilitation of training sessions as required. A handover period will be agreed between all three parties to transition services and is likely to be 4 - 6 months in duration, which has been confirmed by colleagues in Digital Data and Technology Services (DDTS).