Future of Operational Meteorology (FoOM) Tools and Systems

Contract summary

Industry

• Software package and information systems - 48000000

• IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support - 72000000

Location of contract

South West

Value of contract

£18,000,000

Procurement reference

METOFC001-DN519297-41207629

Published date

11 October 2022

Closing date

5 November 2021

Closing time

12pm

Contract start date

5 September 2022

Contract end date

4 September 2027

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Restricted procedure (above threshold)

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

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Description

Met Office as the Authority intends to procure new tooling which will support us in achieving our vision of becoming a global leader in weather and climate services delivery. The tools delivered will help the Met Office to be more agile in responding to the needs of all our customers (including Defence, Civil Aviation, Public Weather Services and a range of other commercial customers) and will ensure we are able to fully utilise the ever-increasing data which will be provided through the current Supercomputer development.

The contract(s) will support:

• Increased investment in ongoing management and development of the tooling to ensure continued currency, and that patches, new releases and improvements are delivered.
• Delivering enhancements to the way in which Met Office Operational Meteorologists deliver services in the future, allowing exploitation of the science and data produced by the Supercomputer, hence delivering benefit from the Supercomputer.
• New capabilities which will deliver improved outputs to expert meteorologists, both from Met Office and those from partner organisations that use Met Office systems, to increase their focus on delivering greater expert service to those customers to maximise situational awareness.
• Delivery of tools that enable Met Office to be more agile in responding to the needs of all Met Office customers, including Defence, Civil Aviation, PWS and a range of other commercial customers.
• Where appropriate, the ability to develop longer term strategic relationships which could support the development and delivery of joint mutual benefits.
• Improved Met Office tools and systems are critical to maximising the advice and guidance given which is increasingly in importance as climate changes causes more weather extremes and uncertainty.
• Meeting Met Office's objective of allowing citizens, industry and business to keep safe and thrive.

This procurement will be split as follows:

Lot 1
Visualisation & Graphical Production
Exposes increasingly large quantities of meteorological data to enable meteorologists to forecast and report the weather to a range of customers, both internal and external and across global markets.
Allows meteorologists to interact with graphical data as part of the production process. This will provide the ability to create graphical outputs overlaid on data visualisations.

Lot 2
Templated Production
Enables the creation of large numbers of products in predefined formats, to include the automatic and manual population of those products using meteorological data, imagery, and text.

Lot 3
Product Distribution
Responsible for the distribution of meteorological products to their intended recipients - both internal and external.

Lot 4
Workflow Automation
Manages allocation of work to Operational Meteorologists - balancing workload across available resource. Improves user experience and efficiency by choreographing processes and launching the tools for the task to be performed.

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Award information

Awarded date

22 August 2022

Contract start date

5 September 2022

Contract end date

4 September 2027

Total value of contract

£11,064,105

This contract was awarded to 2 suppliers.

IBL Software Engineering

CGI IT UK Limited

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About the buyer

Contact name

Aled Evans

Address

Fitzroy Road
EXETER
EX13PB
England

Telephone

03301351550

Email

aled.evans@metoffice.gov.uk