Essex Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner Fire and Rescue Authority (‘the Authority’) wishes to invite organisations to participate in a procurement process for the provision and implementation of both a replacement ESN ready/future proofed Computer Aided Dispatch System (CAD) and Integrated Communication and Control System (ICCS) for Essex County Fire and Rescue Service. The Authority is seeking to appoint one provider to deliver, implement and install both CAD & ICCS systems and to maintain and provide support services for those systems over the duration of the contract; this can be as a consortium, a prime contractor with a variety of subcontractors or a single organisation offering the full service.

The main deliverables of the solution will include the following:

• provision of all infrastructure components;

• provision of the core command and control software;

• provision of all primary and secondary control room operator equipment;

• integration with all the authority’s interfaces to the core command and control software;

• provision of operational services throughout the life of the contract.

In addition to replacing the current core command and control software, the authority is seeking an innovative, location agnostic control room solution, that will support current and future exploitation of digital technology, integration with incident command and digital asset/evidence management systems, and the opportunity to exploit collaboration, resilience and business continuity arrangements with at least one other partner Fire and Rescue Service.

The solution will also need to support the latest Airwave and ESN technologies for critical voice and data, as and when they become available.

It must be location agnostic and where possible, based on a Software as a Service (SaaS) model, in order to provide maximum flexibility and scope to exploit resilience and business continuity opportunities with other fire and rescue services, and future technological developments e.g. Next Generation 999 and digital technology.

It must support future strategic objectives with any other FRS's, including procedures to share risk data for over the border incidents, processes and procedures for the receipt of emergency calls and mobilisation of each other’s resources, procedures for the joint response to a critical or major incident that exceeds the capability of one fire control room solution, and the sharing of incident data with partner agencies using Multi-Agency Incident Transfer (MAIT). Bidders are referred to the procurement documents for the full requirements.

In summary, the successful bidder will be required to provide:

(i) hardware, (including, but not limited to) workstation and server based hardware;

(ii) core command and control software; and (iii) maintenance and support services throughout the duration of the contract.

The authority is seeking solutions that are ideally location agnostic that will provide for integration and resilience arrangements.

The authority is conducting this procurement under the competitive procedure with negotiation (CPN), pursuant to Regulation 29 of the Public Contracts Regulation 2015, as amended. The top five (5) scoring SQ responses will be taken through to submit an initial tender; if the authority does not award on the basis of initial tenders only the top three (3) scoring bids will be invited to the negotiation stage.