Following a successful market engagement exercise which ran earlier this year, the UK’s Yorkshire Water are currently at ‘call for competition stage’ of their AMP7 clean water network repair and maintenance services contract worth an estimated £800 million.

The utility company has included a specific ‘innovation’ tender lot which is designed to complement the company’s existing forward-thinking approach to delivering customer focused services and provide a procurement route to scale up market-ready new technologies.

At this point in time Yorkshire Water envisage that the contract will be tendered in the following Lots:

Lot 1: Emergency Reactive Work (from 2 to 48-Hour Priority) (£160 million)

Lot 2: Planned Reactive Work (from 48-Hour to 84-Day Priority) (£360 million)

Lot 3: Developer Services Work (£120 million)

Lot 4: Metering Work (£160 million)

Lot 5: Clean R&M Innovation Marketplace — The utility company is looking to create a marketplace for innovative solutions for repair and maintenance on its clean water network.

Lots 1 and 2 will cover a wide range of services, including mains diversions, repairs and replacement (including trunk mains), stop taps, replacement and repairs of supply and comms pipes, plus the replacement and installation of valves, hydrants and ferrules, bulk meters and lead pipes. Lot 2 will also include network operation and maintenance, together with leakage detection.

Lot 3 Developer Services Work includes clean only, clean and waste new connections, clean only main laying and non-standard work, for example, clean and waste mains diversion for the purposes of developer work.

Lot 4 Metering Work includes the procurement and storage of meters, domestic and non-domestic meter replacement, installation and repair, domestic and non-domestic internal plumbing work and meter reading.

Through Lot 5 — Clean Water Networks R&M Innovation Marketplace – Yorkshire Water is looking to create a marketplace for innovative solutions for repair and maintenance on a clean water network.

The water company is seeking suppliers who can provide solutions that are capable of transforming the way they work by using non-conventional techniques wherever possible in order to help reduce disruption and add significant value to the customer experience.

The marketplace will utilise mini supplier competitions to procure these solutions, and only suppliers who have been admitted to lot 5 will be eligible to take part in the mini competitions.

The scope of the mini competitions will include but not be limited to:

• Dig improvement — Examples being: the use of keyhole techniques and no-dig approaches, use of long handled tools, suction excavation, pipe pulling and the use of sustainable materials.
• Dig avoidance — For example: in-pipe repair, repair and renewal of communication and supply pipes, self-repairing materials, 3D printing, robotics, internal drone detection and repair.
• Leak prediction –  Detection and triage (including hardware, software and service aspects ).
• Technology led condition assessment and network maintenance solutions.

The water company is looking to appoint between 50 to 200 suppliers to Lot 5.

Initial contract term for Lots 1 to 4 is 4 years, with a further 4-year extension option. The initial contract period for Lot 5 is 3 years, with a further extension option of up to 5 years (3 + 2 years).

Time limit for receipt of requests to participate is 20th April 2020, details are available by contacting Yorkshire Water at: cleanrmtender@yorkshirewater.co.uk