Technical Toolkits – Support, Maintenance and Development Framework

The primary objectives of Lot 1 Safety Case Management System Toolkit are:

ViSI (Visualisation of System Information) is a toolkit which RWM has developed internally to manage (including its evidence base) and facilitate the demonstration of a robust safety case for a Geological Disposal Facility.

In a detailed document, such as an environmental safety case, it can be difficult to follow how each claim relates to underlying arguments and associated evidence as a result of the volume of information which is relevant. This may lead to loss of clarity regarding whether the safety case is robust or whether there may be gaps in claims, safety arguments, or evidence.

The extant VISI system is written in several programming languages. RWM requires a development team to undertake tasks as directed by the RWM in-house team. RWM has an agreed vision and strategy for the development of ViSI, through the ViSI roadmap. While the ViSI system has a roadmap, it is not possible to define the precise functional requirements of the system.

Therefore, RWM will use the agile software development methodology as recommended by Government Digital Service guidelines to replicate successful working arrangements previously used.

The successful bidder for Lot 1 will be expected to provide both support, maintenance, along with the development of the VISI system, and associated components that are required for, or compliment, the system (e.g.: tools for editing, updating, and managing content).

It is anticipated that the Services (as called off from the Framework Agreement) are required to fix bugs (or other issues) and to develop and or improve the VISI system (e.g.: by addressing feature requests). Queries or critical fixes are likely to need fixing at short notice (however, the time to develop a fix or workaround itself is likely to be small) while improvements are likely to take a greater level of effort but have less urgency. The scope of Services shall include all developments of VISI over the period, including code development, testing, documentation, installation/deployment, and technical/architectural advice, together with any other support needed.

The primary objectives of Lot 2 Inventory Toolkit

The inventory toolkits have been developed independently since the 1990s. Data routinely needs to be manually copied between them and there are overlaps in the stored data and code.

There are two main issues that this has introduced: -

• Data management: each toolkit has its own data store and can use different underpinning data or different code to achieve the same purpose, potentially leading to inconsistencies. Manually copying data between toolkits is error-prone and time consuming. The inability to control who uses the toolkits, or which version of the toolkit they use introduces the potential for further errors.
• Efficiency: because of the technology choices and lack of integration the toolkits are costly to maintain and time-consuming to use when data needs to be moved between them

Data and toolkit management issues in other areas have previously had a significant detrimental impact on our reputation (e.g.: thermal modelling errors). Inventory data is an important input to the GDF designs and safety cases, as well as disposability assessments. Hence any errors in the inventory data could impact on our safety cases and disposability assessment advice. As we move through the siting process, there is a risk that such errors would have a significant impact on our attempt to find a willing host community. It is important to minimise this risk.

The successful bidder for Lot 2 will be expected to provide all aspects of software development for the inventory toolkits including backlog management, development of user stories, version control, test plans, bug fixing and deployment. Additionally, the successful bidder will be expected to provide support to users and maintenance to the existing inventory toolkits.

The primary objectives of Lot 3 Nuclear Safety Case Toolkit:

RWM is developing its capability to undertake operational safety assessments in support of site evaluation and waste management. A digital capability has been chosen to align with the function’s broader aim of implementing Building Information Modelling (BIM) as mandated by government. The objective of the OSSS project is to provide the software tools that will facilitate this approach. These are primarily database and configuration management tools that will ease the production of a reliable, consistent, and auditable safety case; calculations are only one part of the total capability.

The scope of this procurement is to build, test and deploy the software such that it delivers the capability defined in the specifications

The successful bidder for Lot 3 will be expected to provide all aspects of software development including backlog management, capture of user needs, version control, test plans, documentation, bug fixing and deployment

The primary objectives of Lot 4 Dig Client:

DIG is a bespoke suite of client applications used to create and edit a number of XML-based electronic forms to record numerical data and its associated uses. The suite includes capabilities to convert units and import/export data into a number of different formats for use in RWM’s modelling and reporting workflows.

The successful bidder for Lot 4 will be expected to provide:

Support, maintenance and development of the DIG suite as required by RWM over the period. This includes the provision of bug fixes, maintenance (to ensure compatibility with RWM’s current and future systems) and new developments (including the migration of functionality, or ability to interface with, any future Common Data Environment commissioned by RWM). The suite is largely written in .NET with C# with a number of elements written in other languages (e.g. Python, C).

Lot 5 Common Shared Services: will be formed by the successful bidders for the above. The successful bidders will be invited to mini tender under this framework for common services associated with all the Technical Toolkits named as described in the specifications. RWM reserves the right to direct award work under Lot 5 up to the value of £50k per task.