SBCD Connected Places Hub Sites Project

This PIN concerns the pre market engagement for procurements for the Swansea Bay City Deal (SBCD) Digital Infrastructure Programme. The Digital Infrastructure Programme is hosted by Carmarthenshire County Council. The Programme envisages that each customer will have a separate contract with the supplier, on materially the same terms. The Digital Infrastructure programme will ensure that the customer implementations are closely co-ordinated to be as similar as possible. The 55m GBP Digital Infrastructure Programme plans to supplement its own funding with potential further funding from other sources, including other partner budgets, and government bodies including Welsh Government and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. The SBCD partnership and other public sector bodies in the region recognise that the provision of high quality, reliable high-speed connectivity is a necessity for efficient public sector delivery. They seek to future proof their network connectivity requirements over a period of 20-30 years or more through the installation of gigabit capable fibre infrastructure services. The Programme intends to procure the long-term use of flexible and future proofed gigabit capable fibre infrastructure services for as much of the public sector estate as possible within budget constraints. The method of providing this long-term use is not defined. For example, bidders will be free to propose an Indefeasible Right of Use, or to propose an alternative approach that provides long-term availability in a different way. The Programme aims to procure maintained fibre infrastructure access circuits to connect around 3000 public sector locations across South West Wales. The infrastructure will be required to support dark fibre connectivity, dedicated bandwidth connectivity or shared and contended services, according to the site requirements. The Programme intends to procure infrastructure services that will support a wide range of overlay network services, including through the existing Public Sector Broadband Aggregation programme (PSBA) and other network services arrangements. Although the procurement will focus primarily on infrastructure services, it may also procure options for internet broadband connectivity to ensure best value use of the infrastructure. The infrastructure services will be procured over the long term, 20 to 30 years or more. It is anticipated that through the potentially large number of connected sites, economies of scale may be realised through aggregation, leading to innovative and cost-effective solutions from the market. The Programme requires the Supplier to design, build and operate the infrastructure services over the duration of the contract. The Supplier may provide all elements of the solution itself or may combine commodity services and products from telecoms providers, services from subcontractors, and its own tools, services and expertise, to provide the Solution. The Supplier will provide a service management function to proactively manage the availability of the solution to agreed service levels, and to provide prompt remedial action in the event of failure. All aspects of the service will be compliant with the relevant security, information management and regulatory requirements. The procurement aims to allow suppliers to submit consortium bids, for example partnering with suppliers with different geographical footprints. The procurement may take the form of a single procurement with multiple lots, or of multiple similar procurements. It is currently envisaged that the lots or procurements will be by broadly defined by geographical boundary. Additional information: Carmarthenshire County Council Swansea Council Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council Pembrokeshire County Council Hywel Dda University Health Board Swansea Bay University Health Board Swansea University University of Wales Trinity Saint David Dyfed Powys Police