Bazalgette Tunnel Ltd., the company building London’s new £4.2 billion, 25-km-long super sewer beneath the Thames, says it is looking for partners to provide it with an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Backup as a Service (BaaS) hosting cloud platform along with full 24/7 management of the IaaS/BaaS service.

The company, which currently has four giant tunnelling machines digging deep below the capital for the project, is also seeking to adapt its Information Systems (IS) model: “This involves transitioning to a mixed sourcing model, leveraging cloud-based services wherever possible” it said in a contract notice posted online this week.

Super Sewer Contracts

The 36-month contracts, extendable up to a total of 84 months, include:

1) Sharepoint support: “[We need] a contractor to provide experienced 2nd and 3rd line SharePoint support expertise to respond to and resolve any incidents raised within agreed SLAs. The services will include collating and translating business requirements into technical requirements and provide solutions which are in line with business expectations. The services will be ad-hoc in nature and include bug fixes of the Tideway SharePoint solution and enhancement requests.”

2)  IaaS provision: “[We need] a contractor to provide an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and Backup as a Service (BaaS) hosting cloud platform along with full 24/7 management of the IaaS/BaaS service; encompassing, design, build and support of the Tideway solution. To be delivered in line with Tideway’s service parameters and logically integrate/interface with Tideway’s operating model.”

Lots of IT Contracts; A Few Skeletons… 

The contracts are the latest opportunity with Tideway, which in December put a £650,000 “computerised maintenance management system” contract out to tender.

Preparatory work began on the Tideway Tunnel in 2015 and work is now underway at each of Tideway’s 24 sites in London; turning up some unusual finds along the way, including a 15th Century skeleton clad in thigh-high leather boots.

Tideway’s 2018/19 annual report confirming the project is on time to be delivered by 2024, although costs have climbed eight percent owing to a number of engineering challenges encountered along the way and detailed in the report.

Three kilometres of the tunnel, which will prevent millions of tonnes of sewage polluting the Thames, have now been constructed. At up to 66 metres deep and more than seven metres wide, the Thames Tideway Tunnel is the biggest infrastructure project ever undertaken by the UK water industry.

Estimated contract values were not provided.