C1170 — Water and Wastewater Network Maintenance Services and Associated Services

Northern Ireland Water and its subsidiaries will be procuring a Contract for its Network Maintenance Programme with capacity to deliver improvement, repair and maintenance works across their water and wastewater network for the PC21 and PC27 Price Control periods.

NI Water has in place a contract for these services until 2025. Procurement for the new Contract is anticipated to commence in early 2024.

As part of the process NI Water will issue a Request for Information (RFI) market enquiry to engage with suppliers who either currently deliver water and sewer network services or who are interested in delivering these services in the future to NI Water. In addition to the RFI, NI Water also plan to hold supplier engagement meetings in mid 2023.

The purpose of the RFI and supplier engagement sessions will be to assess the interest, capacity and capability of the market in providing this type of service. NI Water are also interested in receiving feedback and developing our understanding from the market on the different experiences, approaches and models used in other sectors / utilities for Network Maintenance services to help NI Water select the best procurement strategy to deliver these services going forward.

NI Water will publish a separate notice to seek expressions of interest and suppliers will have the opportunity at that stage to complete and return a RFI Questionnaire and register interest in the supplier engagement meetings. Following the receipt of expressions of interest, NI Water will be in contact with suppliers to set out details of the supplier engagement sessions.

The tender may be split into Lots following the outcome of the supplier engagement sessions and once NI Water have finalised the procurement and contract strategy. The subsequent Contract Notice will provide more details on Lots, Contract duration and value once confirmed.

Procurement for this new Contract will be the Negotiated Procedure to include PQQ, Tender and BAFO Stages.