Hertfordshire County Council – Pre-Procurement Market Engagement for the Watford to Croxley Link (W2CL) Design Concept

Tender description

Hertfordshire County Council (the ‘Council’) is carrying out a Pre-Procurement Market Engagement (‘PPME’) in relation to developing concept designs for a wide range of potential mobility and transit solutions along the Watford to Croxley Link (W2CL), between Watford Junction and Croxley, including the disused railway line.The Council will consider the feedback received from the PPME to help inform the Council’s options and further decision making. For the avoidance of doubt, this stage of the project is not part of a formal procurement process and the Council is not committing, at this stage, to carrying out such a process. Participation or non-participation in the PPME shall not prevent any supplier participating in a potential future procurement, nor is it intended that any information supplied as part of the PPME shall place any supplier at an advantage in a potential procurement process. Participation in the PPME will be at each organisation’s own cost. No expense in responding to Lot 1: The Council is carrying out a Pre-Procurement Market Engagement (‘PPME’) to engage with the market to promote and explain this exciting project along with creating an opportunity for suppliers, operators, and research organisations to partner and create conceptual designs for the delivery of a new and future-ready transport system in Watford. Following the PPME, we are seeking to engage multiple suppliers or consortia to concurrently and independently develop and refine their ideas for creative and holistic / integrated conceptual designs, demonstrating how a range of potential mobility solutions for the Watford to Croxley Link (W2CL) could be delivered. The Council is seeking solutions that consider a wide range of potential mobility options, including active travel, e-mobility, autonomous shared mobility and transit. The Council is seeking to understand the potential for innovation, inform the business case, harness local characteristics, inform the commercial, operation and delivery models and demonstrate a viable and best value solution for W2CL.Conceptual designs will need to propose solutions for each aspect of the W2CL, from the type of mobility solution to the way in which the network / route will be operated. These solutions must achieve the objectives for the W2CL and comply with known constraints as detailed in the W2CL specification. Suppliers will need to evidence how and why their proposed solutions achieve the W2CL specification, and demonstrate that collectively the solutions provide a complete, coherent and feasible concept which illustrates to the Council what a range of potential mobility solutions could be, how they can be delivered and how they could be operated. It is anticipated that the procurement process will commence in early 2022 and once contracts are awarded the contract term will be 3-4 months to develop the concept designs. While the Council will be the procuring body for this work, the Council will work in collaboration with Watford Borough Council, Three Rivers, Network Rail and Transport for London to oversee the delivery of the concept designs.More information is also included in the separate Supplier Briefing Document, also available on In-Tend.See also V1.3 below, additional information for details of how to become involved.