NI Water is inviting suppliers who would like to participate in pre market engagement on 23rd and 24th July ahead of tendering a £6 million contract for a leakage management system to advise Marie Bradley at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by Friday 4th July if they wish to attend.

The water company would welcome confirmation from interested suppliers that they would like to be involved in the exercise to attend these sessions and present their proposed solution.

Ni Water will then arrange individual sessions with suppliers for the above dates - these sessions can be via Teams or face to face and suppliers are asked to indicate if they have a preference.

The company’s water infrastructure extends to 27,200km of mains which is supplied by 24 Water Treatment Works. Since 2012, NI Water has reported leakage utilising a recognised Leakage Management Software (LMS) system whose calculations meet OFWAT regulatory and the UK water industry best practice requirements.

NI Water are now approaching the market to identify providers of LMS systems that can assist it with in delivering robust leakage calculations, data analytics, leakage targeting and reporting.

Due to the approaching expiration of NI Water's current LMS system in March 2028, NI Water requires a provider to supply, embed, support, maintain & develop the software, its component applications and its internal/external data system integrations.

A condition of the new LMS contract is to ensure a seamless transition of calculating and reporting company reconciled leakage from financial year April-2027 / March-2028 into financial year April-2028 / March-2029 and onward. To meet this condition:

• the appointed provider must supply, embed & support their LMS system which will require robust integrations with various internal NI Water data systems and other external data suppliers
• the provider's LMS system must be embedded to allow for the parallel running of business-as-usual data inputs, data analysis and reporting alongside NI Water's current LMS system for the financial period April-2027 / March-2028.

A second condition of the new LMS contract is that the calculations and reporting within LMS meets regulatory OFWAT reporting requirements, adheres to UK water industry best practice guidance and will develop to meet new and evolving UK water industry best practice guidance and innovations.

Although NI Water’s current LMS system is on-premises, it is envisaged that the new LMS contract will be provisioned as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Data-as-a-Service (Daas) solution.

The provider will be required to support and maintain all LMS databases, to provide specialist application support with the vision to develop & enhance NI Water's leakage reporting and targeting capability.

Current estimated start and end contract dates are 1 June 2026 to 31 March 2034, with further possible extension options up to 31 March 2040.

NI Water expects to go out to tender with a formal contract notice in January 2026.