Procurement

Procurement approach

The publicly funded elements of the Shared Rural Network followed an open, fair and transparent competitive procurement process. In line with procurement law, state aid rules and government policies, there was a role for the whole supply chain in the procurement process.

The procurement process identified suppliers who could deliver against a number of criteria and requirements, including offering suitable value for money and an ability to support the delivery of the SRN outcomes on geographic, roads and premises coverage obligations.

No further procurements are expected. The portal to allow potential suppliers to express interest in future procurements has now been removed.

The procurements

The programme ran a number of procurements to source certain products and services that will be required for implementation of SRN. This was conducted in compliance with public sector procurement procedures (“Public Contracts Regulations 2015”).

All procurements were open to any organisation to respond and participate.

There were two initial procurements, managed by Mova (the operating brand of DMSL) on behalf of the Mobile Network Operators (EE, Three, VMO2 and Vodafone).

The Contract Notice for the Acquisition, Design and Build (ADB) Framework was published in November 2021. The ADB framework was designed to appoint suppliers to provide all of the services of Acquisition, Design and Build services for telecom mast base station sites. The ADB services are provided, through call-off contracts, either in different combinations or as a single solution.

The Contract Notice for the Managed Solution (MS) Framework was published in December 2021. The Managed Solution Framework was designed to appoint suppliers to own and provide a managed solution to deliver mobile telecoms base station site services along with the operation and maintenance of selected equipment. The deadline for tenders was March 2022 and the Contract Award Notice was published on 5th July 2022.

A Contract Notice for the Transmission Framework was published in May 2022 and closed in August 2022.

A Contract Notice for the Off-Grid Power Services Framework was published in July 2022 and closed in November 2022. The single procurement was subsequently split into two procurements; one for the products and the other for the ongoing support services. Two non-PCR procurements were run for Off-grid Products by EE and another, separately, for the other three MNOs. An Off-Grid Services procurement is not now required due to very low volumes.

The Contract Notice for Field Operations and Maintenance Services to provide maintenance for active equipment on all SRN sites and passive maintenance for the TNS sites was published in March 2024 and the Contract Award Notice published in November 2024.

All of the procurements that were published can be seen in the table below.