Yorkshire Water has gone out to tender with an industry-specific software contract to provide a decision making framework for the company worth up to £7 million.

The water company is looking to appoint a maximum of two suppliers to the framework contract , which will run for up to ten years with an estimated value of between £3 million to £7 million.

Yorkshire Water said it is presenting an opportunity to the market place to help create the next generation, world leading, asset management thinking and supporting systems.

The utility wants to procure both a software solution and consultancy services for its implementation - the solution is intended to enable forward looking performance based expenditure (and opportunity) decisions.

The contract is divided into two lots: software solution and consultancy services.

Key requirements for the software solution include:

• an intuitive and efficient user interface to include data entry, verification and augmentation
• the capability to create and model input variables from data, host externally created models and include version control
• functionality to utilise models to carry out performance and cost forecasting across the Wholesale and Household Retail asset base
• capability to solve optimisation problems that feature multiple constraints (e.g. time, cost, service)
• capability to select different objective functions for the optimisation process (e.g. maximise net benefit or least whole life cost)
• the ability to interact with SAP and other external datasets
• state of the art reporting and visualisation.

The associated consultancy services will be expected to provide:

• technical implementation of the next generation asset management process
• data cleansing and augmentation of large datasets
• model development to enable performance and cost forecasting
• communicating and embedding business change within the organisation
• building a training package for colleagues on risk and asset management principles and their application, leading to accreditation of employees engaging with the process.

Interested suppliers are being encouraged to tender for either or both lots. Yorkshire Water said consortia bids are also acceptable where complementary skillsets would benefit the project. The framework consists of an initial contract with further extension options.

Time limit for receipt of tenders or requests to participate is 24^th August. Click here to access the contract documentation.