First Rail Customer App Development Procurement

FirstGroup operates passenger bus and rail services across the UK, providing customers with a family of apps to search, plan and purchase tickets for travel. First Rail is part of FirstGroup and are seeking a development partner for their customer-facing iOS and Android Rail mobile apps. The requirement is for a mixture of contracted/retained and ad-hoc/on demand teams to deliver against a prioritised roadmap of feature development, security enhancements and bug fixes. Across the FirstGroup Rail operators, the supplier will need to support a number of different development roadmaps.

A retained team(s) will be contracted on what is proposed to be a rolling 3-6 month basis with an agreed development sprint schedule. In addition, there will be a requirement for ad-hoc/on-demand teams for additional feature developments, maintenance or security requirements not scheduled to be delivered by a retained team. Work undertaken by the ad-hoc teams will be undertaken through agreed Statements of Work and the supplier will need to demonstrate its capability and required timescales to provide this resource.

Different rail operators use different ticketing system suppliers (WebTIS), have different development roadmaps but use elements of a shared code base. The supplier will need to support both a common codebase and different roadmaps for its operators.

The supplier team will work closely with colleagues from First Rail to prioritise roadmap items, maintain backlog, plan sprints and releases, manage UAT phases and contribute to ongoing user research activities. The supplier must have extensive experience and knowledge of the UK rail retail market and associated RDG standards.

First Rail is looking for capable supply partner with an excellent track record in delivery of transport ticketing. The supplier will need to demonstrate innovation, will share an element of the risk around delivery costs/timeframes and has strong processes in place to ensure value for money.