Find a TenderAwarded without competitionTransparency notice
Published 1 Apr 2026, 15:36 BST

Official UK procurement notice

Core HR SaaS Licensing to include Recruitment Module

Official notice

Authority: Sellafield Limited (Public body)

Direct award
Sectors: IT Services & Software (72) Delivery: Delivery location not published
Awarded value£27,600,000published award · exc. VAT
Award in standstill Not publishedno call for competition
Award (standstill) to SAP (UK) LIMITED

What is being bought

Published requirement description

This UK05 Notice is in consideration of Sellafield Ltd.’s (Sellafield) requirement for a number of planned procurements to implement SAP's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) cloud-based solution as an upgrade from Sellafield Ltd.’s legacy on-premise SAP ERP solution; which is affected by an end of supported life constraint, to a replacement and fully supported SAP ERP SaaS solution. Sellafield operates in a complex, highly regulated nuclear licensed site environment and regulated by the UK Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR).

To mitigate against the version of SAP Business Suite 7 (BS7) ERP becoming unsupported, Sellafield is proposing to migrate these core services in 4 phases as follows:

  1. Procurement of SAP Cloud ERP Core HR SaaS Licenses around December 2026 (C15136)
  2. Procurement of a specialist Implementation & Support Partner (ISP) for Core HR service around April 2027 (C15137)
  3. Procurement of SAP Cloud ERP S/4HANA + EAM SaaS Licences around July 2027 (C23156)
  4. Procurement of a specialist Implementation & Support Partner (ISP) for S/4HANA + EAM service around July 2027 (C15139)

As background, Sellafield operates its core business processes through a mature SAP platform covering Finance, HR, Procurement and Warehousing operations. The current ERP system (SAP BS7) which is provided by SAP, will no longer be supported after December 2030. Due to extended SAP support deadline to the SAP ECC Human Capital Management (HCM) there is a threat that beyond that date critical HR systems will fail, which may result in data integrity issues business disruption, non-compliance and increased manual interventions.

Sellafield intends to make a direct award to SAP UK Limited for procurements 1 and 3 above, for a Master Agreement to provide a new SAP ERP Cloud system and subscription model for the various modules to replace legacy ERP solutions including Success Factors, S/4HANA and EAM.

Sellafield’s justification for such a direct award to SAP UK Limited is under Paragraph 7 “Additional or repeat goods, services or works under 7 (b) justification, in addition to absence of competition due to technical reasons under Paragraph 4 “Single Suppliers” under the Procurement Act 2023 (PA23) justifications.

The lotProcurement structure

single lot · no lot value published

Procedure terms & legal framework

From the official record
Procedure method
Direct award
Legal basis
UKPGA · 2023/54 Procurement Act 2023
Notice status
Awarded without competition
Procurement threshold
Unspecified in notice
Regulatory regime
Standard
Commercial structure
Stand-alone contract (no framework)
Competition type
Direct award (no call for competition)
GPA / WTO covered
Unspecified in notice
Recurring procurement
Unspecified in notice
First published
1 Apr 2026, 15:36 BST
Last source update
1 Apr 2026, 15:45 BST
Authority reference
C15136
FTS notice number
2026/S 000-030499
Latest notice
Transparency notice (UK5)
Delivery area
Not published
Official registry OCID
ocds-h6vhtk-067aff Find a Tender
Why no open competition
Additional Repeat Extension Partial Replacement
Published justification
  • Sellafield’s current SAP ERP system will become unsupported after December 2030, so it must be upgraded or replaced to maintain long‑term support and avoid significant risks to business continuity, system reliability, and cyber security.
  • SAP underpins all core enterprise processes and is deeply integrated with critical operational and regulatory systems. Replacing it with a different ERP would require wholesale process redesign across Finance, Procurement, Warehousing and HR, as well as extensive data, integration and control rebuilds creating significant technical constraints, challenges and risks. This would create a transformation lasting over five years - far exceeding the proportional effort of an in‑family SAP upgrade and impossible to complete before existing support ends.
  • The SAP upgrade path enables Sellafield Ltd to retain and extend substantial investments already made in SAP HANA infrastructure and existing SAP modules including SuccessFactors for Talent including the Learning Management System, and established integration patterns. This avoids the cost of retiring working solutions, rebuilding the integration landscape, or procuring extensive retraining and consultancy support required for a different ERP platform.
  • Sellafield operates in a complex, highly regulated nuclear licensed site environment and SAP ERP support various Site Licence Conditions required by the UK Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR).
  • The existing SAP landscape has a significant number of integrations with other internal and external systems. Moving to an alternative ERP solution would require all interfaces being re-architected, re-engineered and tested for compliance which significantly increases the technical complexity and risk that the migration would fail.
  • Sellafield’s strategy is to simplify its application estate, moving to fewer, more strategic enterprise platforms; adopting a new ERP supplier or best of breed mesh architecture approach would reverse this, increase fragmentation, and create unnecessary technical complexity.
  • ERP platforms are not interchangeable; they become part of an organisation’s digital DNA. For a site of Sellafield’s scale and regulatory complexity, moving away from SAP would create disproportionate technical difficulty, heightened operational risk and major transition costs.
  • Sellafield Ltd plans to engage directly with SAP UK Ltd given access to SAP’s Master Cloud Customer Agreement (MCCA) programme is not achievable via a competition, thus significant commercial advantages of direct award to SAP UK Ltd,

Procurements for the specialist Implementation & Support Partner (ISP) requirements; items 2 and 4 above, are intended to be competed via Crown Commercial Services (CCS) Back Office Software 2 (BOS2) RM6285 framework or alternate or replacement CCS framework noting BOS2 expires on 17th August 2027.

Review and risk notes
Risks

SAP ERP Cloud (SuccessFactors plus S/4HANA and EAM) functionality is not as described or the SaaS SLA's fail to meet commitments (availability and outages). Additionally, the service must persist UK sovereignty of hosting and processing.

Notice history

3 events · 2 releases on Find a Tender · since 1 Apr 2026
  1. Transparency notice published
    1 Apr 2026, 15:36 BST
    UK5
  2. Transparency notice published
    1 Apr 2026, 15:45 BST
    UK5
  3. Contract signature expected
    18 Dec 2026, 23:59 GMT
    scheduled

Commercial outcome & contract awards

Published awards, contracts and bid statistics, not a forecast
Awards 1some still in standstill
Awarded value £27,600,0001 award exc. VAT
Awarded toValueDateStatus
SAP (UK) LIMITED26 Feb 2027 – 25 Feb 2034Amended: Description completed£27,600,000—Standstill

Contracting authority & participating public bodies

Sellafield Limited

Contracting authorityPublic authority - sub-central government GB-PPON: PWYP-8439-MZWY Hinton House, Birchwood Park Avenue, Warrington, North West, WA3 6GRContact name, email

Bidders & participating suppliers

1 commercial party on the notice
  • SAP (UK) LtdAwarded supplierGB-COH: 02152073 Clockhouse Place Bedfont Road, Feltham, Middlesex, London, TW14 8HDContact email

Official documents & specifications (2)

Official links; attachments are not copied

Notices published for this procedure

  • Transparency notice awardTransparency noticeUK5Transparency notice on Find a Tender
  • Transparency notice awardTransparency noticeUK5Transparency notice on Find a Tender