Replacement of Alarm Receiving Centre Platform supporting Herts Careline Service

North Hertfordshire District Council (NHDC) is undertaking Preliminary Market Engagement to inform a future procurement for the replacement of its existing Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) platform supporting the Herts Careline service.

The ARC forms a critical component of the Council’s telecare infrastructure, providing 24/7 monitoring and response capability for vulnerable residents and partner organisations. The current platform is approaching technical and contractual end of life and requires replacement with a modern, secure and resilient solution capable of supporting both legacy analogue alarm traffic and the transition to digital telecare technologies.

The purpose of this Preliminary Market Engagement is to obtain market insight and supplier feedback to support the development of a proportionate, transparent and competition-friendly procurement strategy in accordance with the Procurement Act 2023.

The engagement will explore supplier capability across a range of areas including:

• Availability of ARC platforms capable of supporting hybrid analogue and digital alarm protocols
• Migration approaches from a live operational ARC environment with minimal service disruption
• Alternative delivery models including on-premise, private cloud and fully managed platform solutions
• Integration capability with telephony, CRM, field service and related operational systems
• Platform resilience, disaster recovery and cybersecurity capability
• Commercial models, lifecycle cost drivers and approaches to managing supplier lock-in
• Scalability and interoperability to support future shared service arrangements and Local Government Reorganisation
• Opportunities for innovation, automation and operational efficiency improvements
• Sustainability and social value considerations within platform delivery and hosting models.

NHDC uses an E-Tendering system (In-Tend) for all procurement activities, including Preliminary Market Engagement (PME). Suppliers must submit their responses via the Supply Hertfordshire Portal at:
 Supply Hertfordshire Electronic Tendering Site https://in-tendhost.co.uk/supplyhertfordshire/aspx/Home

• You must be registered on the portal to submit a response.
• If already registered, use your existing username and password.
• A password reminder link is available on the homepage if required.

For technical difficulties, please contact the In-Tend Helpdesk at 0845 557 8079 or support@in-tend.com

This engagement is strictly for information gathering purposes and does not constitute a call for competition or commitment to procure. Insights obtained will be used to refine the specification, procurement approach, contract structure and evaluation methodology while ensuring equal treatment of suppliers and avoidance of any unfair competitive advantage.