Defence Online

Type of document: Contract Notice
Country: United Kingdom

1. Title: CONTAINER PLATFORM DELIVERY AND SUPPORT 2022 – 2023
2. Awarding Authority: HMRC Chief Information Office – Enterprise Cloud Services (ECS), GB. Web:
3. Contract type: Service contract
4. Description: The Awarding Authority are seeking a supplier to build and maintain the HMRC Container Platform and associated components. Product Delivery Management Impacting & Design for HMRC Container Platform (HCP) Service Products Product Catalogue Integration to the Enterprise Cloud Services CI/CD tools Service Management (ITIL) Evergreening and Patch Management Capacity and performance management”
5. CPV Code(s): 72000000, 72262000, 72300000
6. NUTS code(s): UKE, UKE4, UKE41, UKG22, UKG21
7. Main site or location of works, main place of delivery or main place of performance: Location No specific location, for example they can work remotely
Address where the work will take place “The Supplier will be expected to work off-site with occasional visits in to an HMRC office. ECS Primary Location of Telford, Shropshire
The supplier shall cover all Travel and Subsistence costs to the Primary Location.
Upon request by the Authority, supplier personnel shall expected to travel to other HMRC locations in the UK and the cost of this travel will be covered by HMRC’s Travel and Subsistence Expenses policy.”
8. Reference attributed by awarding authority: Not provided.
9. Estimated value of requirement: Budget range Estimated spend up to £5 million over 2 years.
10. Closing date for applications 29.12.2021 (11:59 pm).
11. Address to which they must be sent: For further information regarding the above contract notice please visit
12. Other information: Deadline for asking questions Wednesday 22 December 2021 at 11:59pm GMT
Off-payroll (IR35) determination Contracted out service: the off-payroll rules do not apply
Latest start date Tuesday 1 March 2022
Expected contract length 2 Years with an optional 6 months extension
About the work
Why the work is being done “At a high level the centralised Container Product team will support the delivery of repeatable Container Clusters and associate platform management enabling Application DevOps teams to deliver services without the need to worry about the container Platform that they will consume. Supporting the strategic deliverables of making HMRC a Great Place to Work and Collect the right tax and pay out the right financial support – through the innovative delivered processes.
The care deliverables are to support the reduction of duplication of effort, resources and platforms which incur significant costs not only immediately but will continue to grow and cause future issues and expenditure.
It is difficult to quantify the overall financial benefits but the positive would be the reduce effort through standardisation and enabling development teams to deliver services and solutions at pace”
Problem to be solved “The problem(s) that are being overcome are both business and technically in manner
Business Problems to overcome, some activity already underway:
Business Challenge around disparate and ways of working or engaging, which is leading to additional costs and timeframes in delivery of solutions
Confusing and cumbersome processes to engage with the IT Strategy and solutions
Inability to influence the design and service architecture is driving poor customer and colleague experience, complex delivery model.
Risk of technical debt proliferating around the business with no central ownership or drive to new ways of working
Technical Problem to overcome, some activity already underway:
Complex model of Architecture and delivery
Repeated skills and knowledge leading to increased technical and resource costs
Ensure that HMRC resource have effective technology tools, reducing duplication, to run the HMRC business, and to do their job
Support the design of digital tax processes which make it easier to get tax right, repeatable technical components and improving experience of delivering services
Improve developer experience, delivering compliance inline with industry good practice
Reduce the growing cost to support IT systems, replacing with resilient, future-proof, flexible solutions ”
Who the users are and what they need to do “All HMRC customer groups (Customer Compliance, Customer Services, Customer Strategy and Tax Design, Corporate, VOA, Borders and Trade) need container platform services that can be consumed by them, upon which they can build their specific line of business exploitation services.
HMRC Chief Data Office needs platform services which enable Container Services with associated Goverance and Platform Monitoring.
Other Government Departments rely on the Platform for receiving data for use within HMRC, and sharing HMRC data for their use.”
Early market engagement No Early Market Engagement has taken Place.
Any work that’s already been done “ECS have been working on the Container Platform (HCP) since 2018, with a new strategy, in partnership with the Chief Technology and Delivery Office designed to deliver container services and improved developer experience across HMRC core platforms (AWS, Azure and Crown Hosting).
Significant work has started to deliver the platform roadmap and initial services on AWS and Azure.
The focus of the new arrangement will be to continue the roadmap delivery and the development of the HCP services with HMRC Platforms”
Existing team The successful supplier will work in collaboration with the existing team for an appropriate hand over.
Services are currently delivered with a current supplier supported by the current in-house resources and leadership
Current phase Live
Working arrangements The Supplier will:
Be expected to work off-site using own devices or, where required on HMRC equipment
Adhere to HMRC’s security policies when using supplier-devices
Travel to other HMRC sites where required. No additional expenses chargeable to HMRC for travel/accommodation in agreed base office locations per SOW.
Provide upskilling to permanent staff to increase internal capability.
Select/supply suitably qualified personnel.
Manage their personnel/providing replacement staff of equal experience/expertise.
Deliver requirements/outcomes specified by HMRC Product
Meet Standard hours 8am-6pm
Out of hours support or enhanced 24/7 including evenings/bank holidays/weekends where required for some products/services and for teams to support the platform”
Security clearance The Supplier will:
ensure all staff achieve Security-Clearance (SC), to ensure appropriate controls are managed at the Platform level
adhere to HMRC vetting policy and require SC before individuals engage on the contract
No offshoring permitted for both resource and data, work delivered must be aligned with HMRC’s Offshoring Policy.”
Additional information
Additional terms and conditions Additional HMRC Mandatory Terms and Conditions will apply. Will be provided to shortlisted suppliers.
Scoring Methodology:
No evidence of criteria
Limited Evidence does not meet criteria
Satisfactorily meets response to criteria
Good response to criteria
Excellent response to criteria
The supplier will provide HR management support to each individual resource. Any capability/behaviour concerns will be raised by HMRC to the supplier, to act on. HMRC will have the right to remove individuals off the account if standards of capability/behaviour are breached.
All expenses must be pre-agreed between parties, complying with HMRC Travel and Subsistence Policy
Skills and experience
Buyers will use the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience to help them evaluate suppliers’ technical competence.
Essential skills and experience
Confirm at least 3-years experience in architecting, transforming and maintaining native container clusters and toolsets deployed in multiple public cloud platforms including Amazon-Web-Services(AWS) and Microsoft-Azure(Pass/Fail-Please provide Y/N with supportive narrative)
Confirm prior experience in competently handling 24/7, 365-live support on high profile services, and developing robust live service support arrangements using Agile and DevOps approaches(Pass/Fail-Please provide Y/N with supportive narrative)
Confirm experience working with Red-Hat-Enterprise-Linux as the default service OS and Windows as part of implementing containerisation and container orchestration technology (AKS/ELS) at scale. (Pass/Fail-Please provide Y/N with supportive narrative)
Please provide evidence that supports your financial capability to deliver a contract of this size. (Pass/Fail-Please provide Y/N with supportive narrative)
Experience of successful service transition from incumbent supplier and management of exit handover activities -2.5%
Build approach creating secure re-usable and scalable components including their continuous improvement and refinement in ongoing operation, including use of performance and logging software.- 2.5%
Demonstrate proven expertise and competency of using key services to maintain cloud-native services support on Kubernetes in achieving challenging SLA’s, greater that 99.9% – 2.5%
Producing and maintaining technical documentation and a Knowledgebase. – 2.5%
Providing accurate and timely information to maintain a Configuration Management Database 2.5%
Working safely within a UK based secure engineering environment at Security Clearance level. 2.5%
Nice-to-have skills and experience
Experience working with VMWare based Private Cloud platforms
Managing work allocation through Jira Service Desk
Prior successes in implementing CI/CD and frequent deployments in an organisation operating tightly controlled ITIL (or similar ITSM) practices
Security architecture – in particular, example(s) of implementing a ‘DevSecOps’ way of working within teams.
How suppliers will be evaluated
All suppliers will be asked to provide a written proposal.
How many suppliers to evaluate 3
Proposal criteria
Provide details of how you would mobilise/maintain resources for delivery and management of the platform and how you would increase capacity in areas of skill shortages to meet urgent demand.
Describe some of the techniques used to develop the repeatable consumption of native Cloud Container services across AWS and Microsoft Azure
How would you ensure value for money is achieved when developing a new deployment platform on public cloud?
What technologies would you consider and why, when developing a new Managed Container Platform solution using Native and OpenSource capabilities?
Describe how you would ensure user needs are considered at every stage of the development cycle of a service.
Describe how you would approach a Microservice/Container adoption in a large organisation. Consider how you would influence the culture, bring new skills, measure success and give clients lasting capability.
Describe how you would get a service ready to be supported 24/7, 365 days a year, and maintain the same level of responsiveness during working hours.
Explain how the resources supplied would work with ECS / incumbent suppliers to transition a complex live service/platform; the transition process and artefacts/documentation you would expect to be provided.
Describe your experience in contract exit plans and handovers to incoming suppliers and/or internal resource in previous engagements.
Cultural fit criteria
Describe how you will collaborate and partner with HMRC staff and other suppliers, potentially in the same team. – 1%
Describe how you will demonstrate proactivity in sharing knowledge and experiences with members of the team, especially with less skilled HMRC resources.- 1%
Describe how you will promote ideas and demonstrate innovative ideas and value-added initiatives. – 1%
Describe how you will respond when your members of staff make mistakes. – 1%
Describe how you will work with other suppliers present in HMRC. – 1%
Inclusive and accessible recruitment practices, development-practices and retention-focussed activities including those provided in the Guide for line managers on recruiting,managing and developing people with a disability or health condition-MAC7.1 -5%.
Influence staff, suppliers, customers and communities through the delivery of the contract to support health and wellbeing, including physical and mental health.- MAC7.2 -5%.
Payment approach Time and materials
Additional assessment methods
Case study
Work history
Reference
Presentation
Evaluation weighting
Technical competence
45%
Cultural fit
15%
Price
40%
Question and answer session
Log in to view question and answer session details
Questions asked by suppliers
Supplier Briefing Session – To explain scoring, social value, criteria and requirement. HMRC will be holding a one-off briefing session to discuss the scoring methodology, the requirement and the criteria on Monday 20th December 2021-11am-12pm for any potential suppliers. This will be an information session to explain the scoring, social value and the requirement. We will not be answering questions during this session, instead please post questions on the Digital-Marketplace and answers will be posted so all suppliers can view. Please email Waseem Rana at waseem.rana@hmrc.gov.uk by Monday 9am 20th December with details of no more than 2 participants per organisation. We will require attendee names and email addresses. Thank you HMRC
TKR-20211215-EX-1742004