Ofwat Board Software

Ofwat is inviting Suppliers to submit a tender for a meeting and document collaboration hosted solution to support the Ofwat Board.

The solution should allow users to securely access meeting documents anytime, anywhere through iPads, iPhones, Windows computers/Surface Pros.

Our users value a digitalised, paperless system to avoid the necessity of receiving and carrying large packs of printed documents when attending meetings.

Since 2018, Ofwat has used "Decision Time" to provide the necessary functionality required to support the Ofwat Board.

The contract for the current service provider will end on 8 September 2022.

We aim to award the contract prior to contract expiry to ensure a smooth handover, if necessary.

The Ofwat Board consists of a Chairman, Chief Executive, three executive directors and six non-executive directors.

The Board is also attended by the General Counsel / Board Secretary.

Board members are supported by the Board Secretariat and Executive Board members and the Chair by Personal Assistants (PAs).

The Board meets generally on a monthly basis at Ofwat's offices in Birmingham and London or occasionally at another convenient location.

There are also regular meetings of the People Committee, Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, and Major Projects Committee (approx 4-5 times a year).

There are less frequent meetings of the other committees (Nominations and Casework).

Meetings have been running in a virtual or hybrid format since the Covid-19 pandemic and are likely to continue in hybrid format.

The Board software will be used for all Board and Committee meetings.

Board meetings are also attended by members of Ofwat's Senior Leadership team and other Ofwat colleagues.

Ofwat have approximately 250 users in its two offices based in Birmingham and London.

Client devices are mostly Microsoft Surface Pro 7 and Surface Pro 2017 models running either Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.

Users do not have local administration rights to install software or drivers.

Access to the internet is permitted but some sites are restricted and staff are also restricted from downloading executable and compressed files.

All Ofwat staff also have a mobile phones (currently either iPhone 7 or 11 but all will be moved to iPhone 11 by end of 2022) managed by Microsoft Intune, giving them access to email, SharePoint Online and OneDrive.

Non-executive directors utilise corporate provided iPads, managed by Intune but are not provided with Windows client devices.

The documents that will be provided to the Board members will consist of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, links within the documents to external documents, and PDF.

There may also be the need for images, graphs and video files to be uploaded.