Digital Directorate Partner · UK public procurement notice

Scottish Water Digital Directorate is accountable for delivering digital and technology services and solutions that deliver measurable value to our core business. In order to do this, we work closely with our business colleagues to deliver value and support the attainment of our strategic objectives. Over the last number of years, we have delivered on our cloud first strategy and replaced much of our enterprise legacy applications with modern evergreen SaaS solutions, examples include but are not limited to Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Workday, Oracle fusion, Oracle Primavera and IBM Maximo. We have invested in Microsoft Azure as our primary cloud platform where we build and run innovative solutions for our business. Scottish Water are modernising our network offerings, our strategy is to move to a software defined network approach.

Building on this and to support emerging business, customer, and regulatory requirements Scottish Water need a digital supply chain that enables expedient solutions delivery whilst supporting the ongoing maintenance and evergreening of our infrastructure, through recognised industry best practice.

The convergence of IT and OT has accelerated as our assets become increasingly connected to the internet using a growing array of sensors and driven by opportunities to enhance service, reduce cost and carbon emissions via an intelligent asset base. In doing so, the solutions we employ must comply with Network & Information Systems (NIS) directive. Supplier arrangements that seamlessly integrate these complex and high-scale digital innovations with engineering practices across capital investment are essential and we are exploring how such arrangements can align with the 'enterprise' model described here: www.project13.info/about-project13/ ↗

Scottish Water are looking for supplier arrangements which operate at scale, with demonstrable breadth of experience, portfolio and subject matter resources, as well as the ability to manage a wider supply chain where required. Within this we may also be looking for direct interaction with niche suppliers where necessary. We require a supply chain that delivers knowledge, expertise of modern technology, provides access to innovation, and can act as both integrator and expert adviser on Artificial Intelligence (AI), automation, digital twins and other relevant technologies. Scottish Water's intention is to build supplier relationships with those who have a clear strategy and methodology which supports and develops modern engineering practices such as Platform Engineering, DevOps, CI/CD, Automation, Software Defined Networking, Zero Trust, IT/OT convergence and who are capable of continuously implementing technology transformation in a secure way.

Scottish Water requires access to digital skills as well as product, programme and project support in a flexible way to achieve objectives under its Digital Strategy, whilst building relationships with suppliers who can partner in maturing our digital strategy, and implementing and transferring knowledge, as well as leveraging frontier technology.

Scottish Water's digital strategy is to:

• Empower and enable our people and partners to be more effective
• Improve decision-making through data-driven insights
• Enhance productivity and efficiency through innovation and automation.
• Safeguard and protect our business, data and customers from digital threats

The scope of the procurement(s) is likely to include some or all of the following services both for build and run. We are interested in market views as to how best to group these services for procurement and intend to issue a questionnaire on this shortly.

• Network Services
• Security Services
• Operational Technology Services
• End User Services
• Application (Product) Services
• Cloud Services
• Data & Analytics services

The potential scope of these services will be described in the questionnaire.