Geotechnical and Drainage Asset Information Management System (GDMS) Phase 13

Highways England is the government company charged with operating, maintaining and improving motorways and major (trunk) roads in England.

Civils asset management in Highways England includes drainage and geotechnical information, as well as pavements, structures and technology. Asset data enables Highways England to make informed decisions about the way it operates and maintains the strategic road network. Highways England continuously improves by gaining a better understanding of its assets through an asset delivery programme and investment in its asset management processes and systems. Highways England’s existing geotechnical and drainage asset information management systems (GDMS and Highways Agency Drainage Data Management System (HADDMS) respectively), are Highways England’s prime geotechnical and drainage asset information management systems for inventory and condition data. Management and upgrades to both asset information systems form part of a programme that has been ongoing for approximately twenty years.

The geotechnical asset information system, GDMS, was re-platformed (working with Mott MacDonald and Bentley Systems (formerly Keynetix)) between 2017 and 2020 (“Phase 12”) to mitigate against the risks of software obsolescence and to meet current business needs. As part of the re-platforming, a key business goal was to provide a systems architecture that could facilitate a single, unified platform that catered for management of both geotechnical and drainage assets. Highways England has been granted a license to use and adapt the specially written software and associated documentation. In order to maximise Highways England’s investment to date, Highways England wishes to compete the ongoing support and iteration of this project as part of this procurement exercise.

This project, the GDMS Phase 13 project, shall provide:

• a)IT service management for the geotechnical aspects of the GDMS platform that have been developed to date;
• b)A replacement for the legacy HADDMS platform; and
• c)Interoperability services with Highways England’s other systems.