Cumulative Effects Framework Hosting and Maintenance

The Offshore Wind Directorate has a requirement to provide long term hosting, maintenance, and development of the Cumulative Effects Framework (CEF) on a digital platform. The contractor will be responsible for the full migration of the CEF model on a new, secure hosting platform, and setting up and testing the business as usual operation of the CEF on the platform through trial runs with known parameters. The contractor is expected to maintain and manage the CEF infrastructure including completing all necessary software updates as required by the Scottish Government, and ensuring that the tool is easily accessible on a secure platform for the users to undertake runs using their own parameters and scenarios. Hosting of the CEF will include providing regular use performance updates, guidance, backups, bug fixes and updates to ensure most current and relevant information and approaches are utilised. Further, the contractor will be responsible for the development of all CEF model components e.g. managing the CEF Data Store/library and undertaking the appropriate updates to datasets as new information becomes available such as new Seabird Census Data and seabird GPS distribution maps.

This tender will provide a mechanism for iteratively estimating offshore windfarm effects on key receptors which ultimately feed into offshore wind project level environmental assessments and future planning work that supports sustainable development of offshore wind energy and successful delivery of climate change net zero targets.

The Scottish Government is undertaking early market engagement in advance of a potential procurement exercise. We are inviting suppliers to attend a virtual engagement event to explore and discuss the forthcoming requirement. The purpose of the Event:

This session will provide a high-level overview of the requirement and invite suppliers to:

-ask probing questions to clarify the scope and objectives;

-share initial thoughts and ideas on how they would approach the requirement; and

-help inform the development of the procurement strategy and specification.