GIS Upgrade and Infrastructure Provision

A Utilities Contract Award Notice
by NORTHERN GAS NETWORKS LTD

Source
OJEU
Type
Contract (Services)
Duration
1 year (est.)
Value
£2M
Sector
TECHNOLOGY
Published
21 May 2021
Delivery
To 20 Aug 2022 (est.)
Deadline
n/a

Concepts

Location

Leeds

Geochart for 2 buyers and 3 suppliers

2 buyers

3 suppliers

Description

The scope of this project is being delivered in three lots. These are: Lot 1 Upgrade the current version of ESRI GIS, in line with NGN GIS strategy with 24/7 third line support of the GISApplications. Lot 2 Provision and establish the IT Infrastructure to operate all the core components in the new system from NGN’sAWS secure virtual private data centre. Lot 3 Rebuild the Interface into SAP. The current interface is bespoke to NGN and does not have graceful failureor rollback capability. NGN would like to adopt an ‘off the shelf’ interface that requires configuration only andutilises the SAP Geo Enablement Framework (GEF) sync framework for example.

Lot Division

1 ESRI GIS Upgrade

NGN proposes that the current version of ESRI GIS needs to be upgraded from the current version of 9.3.1 to the most up to date version of ESRI GIS. As NGN will be migrating from the geometric network model to the utility network model it is expected that considerable data transformation and cleansing will be required as part of the upgrade. As the current version of the write instance of the ESRI database (9.3.1) does not have a direct upgrade path to the latest version, a non-conventional upgrade path may need to be considered including possible use of extract, transform and load (ETL) utilities from ESRI and third parties. This data cleansing exercise would need to be done across all individual demarcation layers of the current ESRI GIS estate. For example, there are some aspects of GIS which NGN do not use now that could be removed as part of the data cleansing. This would need to be in line with NGN's Data Migration Strategy' (available in the Glossary section of this scope) which includes the production of logical and physical data models, ETL mapping documentation and data profiling analysis. Any design submitted within a tender response will be subject to review against NGN AWS design principles and a secure by design principle. Below are the factors which need to be considered and carried out as part of Lot 1: Consolidate to a single instance of database and application for GIS. Support the current inflight and roadmap developments as outlined in this document. GIS landscape should be COTS or with minimal custom development. It should have least dependency on the bespoke solution. Licenses should be rationalized to the best possible way. High availability environment is required for the GIS, which is currently not available. Minimise data update lag across all GIS application (Desktop, Web and Mobile). Minimise the manual intervention and automate the process as far as possible (like data updates from the measurement technicians). Recommendation should align GIS compatible with the upcoming technology and landscape. NGN GIS has approximately 12 GIS Editors, 500 Office GIS users, 500-600 Mobile GIS users. View only, access to limited GIS layer map would be enabled for external users. NGN GIS roadmap should in future be capable to perform locational driven spatial analysis in SAP HANA. Eventually data edit process and needs to be improved and move to faster data update mechanism, as NGN needs its GIS infrastructure to support a more optimised process with near real time updates GIS database is updated with approx. 2000 updates a week, with 9 editors on average. There is no major performance related issue in the current editing system. Ability to extract ‘delta’ changes from core dataset to provide updates to third parties, this includes the ‘North East Utility Asset Register.’ Ability to move any system or application within the GIS platform currently on Oracle Database to HANA Database. Identify any missing ESRI licences or any which is surplus to requirements. For example, we have basic and standard licences for some of the functionality but there may be scope to get advanced. N.B. During the tender process it was identified that certain aspects of the project could only be carried out by NGN's incumbent supplier due to IP issues. The scope was updated as follows: Additional Requirements: — conduct design activities for the move to a Utility Network Model, — a data quality assessment on migrating to a Utility Network Model, including data cleanse and data migration activities (this should include a contingency in the plan to deal with any data quality issues found during the assessment, based on a pricing of 100 days work for data cleansing activities). Out of scope Lot 1 will not include the configuration of the current Network View applications (MyMaps Internal, My Maps Mobile and MyMaps External which are provided by the incumbent party) on to the new architecture.

2 Provision and Establish the IT Infrastructure to operate all the Core Components in the New System from NGN’s AWS Secure Virtual Private Data Centre

NGN would look to establish the IT Infrastructure to operate all the core components in the new system. Here, NGN require the AWS architecture to be: Designed as three tier- development, QA and production Designed to be highly available To have a regular (daily) back up schedule utilising Veritas et back up technology To be in the London AWS availability zone, in NGN’s secure virtual private datacentre To have data at rest encrypted To have a DR capability to the Ireland AWS availability zone, with an RTO of 24 hours To pass an independent vulnerability and penetration test before going live To be built to the Centre for Internet Security AWS Foundations benchmark as the basis for best practice for its public cloud infrastructure, with the aim to be get a perfect score. The sizing and specifications of the AWS hosting will be developed during the project. NGN have an AWS billing and support partner in place, the purchase of AWS instances would be managed through that supplier for this work. NGN have a requirement to provide certain layers of their maps to external third parties via the Internet. This access would be provided via demilitarised zone (DMZ) via a proxy’ capability and will require authentication for to access the maps. The design needs to cater for this requirement with NGN facilitating DMZ capabilities through a separate virtual private cloud (VPC) and through VPC Peering. Any design submitted within a tender response will be subject to review against NGN AWS design principles and a secure by design principle. Below are the factors which would need to be considered and carried out as part of Lot 2: NGN utilises Amazon Web Services and utilises RedHat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and Windows as preferred operating system platforms so any proposed solution needs to consider this. NGN deploys a three-tier environment model for its applications this includes development, quality Assurance (Test) and production. Quality Assurance environment is built to be a duplicate of the production environment and NGN utilises AWS functionality to reduce the costs. Disaster recovery environment will be taken care by the larger infrastructure setup applicable though-out the organization. The recommendations are provided, assessing the current, ongoing and planned GIS updates at NGN. Single Sign On is currently provided by delegating identity to Active Directory. NGN is moving from a LDAP orientated identity provider to a SAML 2.0/Active Directory Federated Service Identity delegation.

3 Rebuild of the interface into SAP

Lot 3 requests the rebuild of the interface into SAP. The current interface is bespoke to NGN and does not have graceful failure or rollback capability. NGN would like to adopt an ‘off the shelf’ interface that requires configuration only and utilises the SAP Geo Enablement Framework (GEF) sync framework for example. Any design submitted within a tender response will be subject to review against NGN AWS design principles and a secure by design principle. Below are the factors which would need to be considered and carried out as part of Lot 3: Minimise data update lag across all GIS application (Desktop, Web and Mobile). Minimise the manual intervention and automate the process as far as possible (like data updates from the measurement technicians).

Award Detail

1 1Spatial Group (Cambridge)
  • ESRI GIS Upgrade
  • Reference: 1
  • Value: £1,665,699
2 Unnamed (None)
  • Provision and Establish the IT Infrastructure to operate all the Core Components in the New System from NGN’sAWS Secure Virtual Private Data Centre
  • Reference: 1
  • Value: £46,945
3 Eyagilityworks (London)
  • Reference: 1
  • Value: £136,145

CPV Codes

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

Indicators

  • Award on basis of price.

Reference

Domains