Procurement

Procurement approach

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

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

Planned procurements

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

All procurements will be open to any organisation to respond and participate.

Details of the procurement, or procurements, have still to be finalised and this site will be updated as the planning progresses.

At this time, the intention is to run two initial procurements:-

• A shorter procurement to select suppliers to provide “Site Search” services.  This is currently proposed to handle the services of site search and selection up to, and including, planning permission submission, but not beyond that stage.  The procurement will set up a framework agreement with, probably, five selected suppliers.  Each Mobile Network Operator (“MNO”) may then use this framework to run one or more further competitions to select a supplier or suppliers to provide these services for the SRN programme.
• A longer, larger, procurement, starting later than the first one, to select suppliers for a second framework agreement.  This second framework will have multiple Lots, the details of which are still under consideration.  The eventual scope and number of Lots will be informed by pre-market engagement meetings and supplier conferences to be run between now and when the procurements start.  As for the first procurement, each MNO will subsequently run further competitions to select the supplier(s) they wish to contract with.

Register your interest

To  learn more about the opportunities relating to the publicly funded elements of the Shared Rural Network, please complete the below form. Following receipt of an expression of interest the authority will send a Non-disclosure Agreement (NDA) to the supplier to sign online. Once the NDA has been signed and verified by the authority, the supplier will be provided with an RFI.