Published date: 8 September 2017

Last edited date: 8 September 2017

Closed opportunity - This means that the contract is currently closed. The buying department may be considering suppliers that have already applied, or no suitable offers were made.


Closing: 9 October 2017

Contract summary

Industry

  • Software package and information systems - 48000000

Location of contract

HP20 1BD

Value of contract

£0 to £190,000

Procurement reference

BMK2016-034

Published date

8 September 2017

Closing date

9 October 2017

Contract start date

1 November 2017

Contract end date

31 October 2022

Contract type

Service contract

Procedure type

Open procedure (above threshold)

Any interested supplier may submit a tender in response to an opportunity notice.

This procedure can be used for procurements above the relevant contract value threshold.

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

Description

Local Fire and Rescue Services (FRS) have been using wide area paging over the last few decades as a means of primarily contacting or mobilising officers and some crews. There have been two main providers - Vodafone Paging and PageOne. These are currently the only two traditional national paging suppliers in the UK with any market share.

As of Q2 2017, Vodafone announced that they were looking to sell their paging business to PageOne, which was subsequently rejected by the Competition and Markets Authority. Following this all customers were given notice that Vodafone were to close their paging business completely by November 2017 (6 months' notice). Following feedback, a later & final date of March 2018 has been announced.

Immediately after the announcement, the three Thames Valley Fire & Rescue Services (BFRS, OFRS & RBFRS) met to discuss options for the way forward as well as investigating the most obvious solution of transferring our paging requirements like for like to PageOne.

The decision was taken that given the cessation of Vodafone's service this was the opportune time to assess our needs and seek a different solution that would meet our requirements both now and into the future.

There is an urgent need for BFRS, OFRS & RBFRS to identify a suitable replacement within a limited timescale due to all Officers, On Call & Day Crewing personnel currently being alerted via Vodafone wide area pagers.

The decision has therefore been taken to move to an app based mobilising system.

More information

Attachments

Links

Additional text

To access the full tender documents you must register at the below link and express an interest in the tender:

https://in-tendhost.co.uk/rbfrs-bmkfrs/aspx/Home

About the buyer

Contact name

Jarvis Osborne

Address

Buckinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service
Brigade HQ, Stocklake
Aylesbury
HP20 1BD
England

Email

procurement@bucksfire.gov.uk