Severn Trent Water is seeking supply chain input ahead of an upcoming procurement for Common Data Environment software.

The water company has launched a preliminary market engagement exercise intended to inform its approach to procuring a Common Data Environment (CDE) capability to support capital delivery across a large, multi party project portfolio.

The aim of the engagement is to understand current market capabilities, delivery models and integration approaches and is focused solely on CDE capabilities. References to design tools or asset information are limited to integration and contextual use within the CDE

Modular and best of breed approaches are explicitly in scope, provided they can operate effectively at enterprise scale and integrate with adjacent systems including design authoring applications.

Severn Trent is interested in hearing about CDE platforms with the following key capabilities:

• Multi-organisation and user management, including configurable roles, permissions, and access controls across programmes and projects
• ISO 19650-aligned information management, including document-level quality assurance workflows, approvals, status codes, and controlled transitions between WIP, Shared, and Published states
• Standards-compliant metadata and naming, with robust version control and auditability
• Ability to capture and manage information against an asset or system hierarchy defined by project requirements, for contextual association and retrieval of documents and models within the CDE.
• Comprehensive viewing and interrogation of industry-standard file formats (e.g. RVT, IFC, DWG, DWF), including measurement, inspection, and markup tools
• Native or integration-led model federation and coordination capabilities
• High performance and scalability to support a large portfolio (e.g. thousands of concurrent projects and large data volumes)
• Support for either in-platform or integration-led document editing and collaborative authoring, beyond a simple file repository model
• Ability to work with a range of file types, including common office formats and digital design files, noting that not all formats are expected to be edited natively
• Compliance with organisational information security, data hosting, and residency policies (e.g. UK or EU-based hosting)
• Open APIs and integration capabilities, including exposure of file metadata for downstream reporting and analytics platforms (e.g. Power BI)
• Task, issue, and workflow management associated with documents and models
• Mobile access via applications or equivalent interfaces
• Support for digital design referencing mechanisms (e.g. external references, links, data shortcuts)
• Native forms functionality to support structured data capture
• Strong platform administration capabilities, including user management, licensing, and programme-wide configuration (via UI or APIs)
• Comprehensive activity logging and audit trails linking user actions to file and data changes
• Ability to synchronise file metadata with drawing and model title blocks, with bidirectional updates where applicable
• Automated PDF rendition and publishing triggered by workflow status changes

Current estimated start and end contract dates are 1 November 2027 to 31 October 2032, with a further possible extension option to 31 October 2035. The water company expects to go out to tender in March 2027.

Interested suppliers are invited to submit responses by 8 June via Severn Trent’s SAP Business Network portal - click here to access the portal