Royal Navy Museums Broadband Services

What the buyer is asking for

All existing broadband connections to Museum sites are provided by a single supplier. The individual Museum sites are currently interlinked via an MPLS network provided by the current supplier. Each site has a Juniper SRX300 router installed which is managed by the current ISP. The Portsmouth HQ site has a Juniper SRX340. Backup connections are also present at each site for redundancy, with a separate router installed and managed by the current ISP. The backup connection at the Portsmouth HQ site terminates into a separate building. As part of the MPLS network provided by the current ISP, all sites route through a cloud firewall and have a centralised internet breakout. We are provided visibility over the cloud firewall through an online portal which allows us to view and download firewall logs and add/edit/remove inbound firewall rules for our sites as required. Museum IT infrastructure and services are centralised at the HQ site in Portsmouth. Other sites communicate with this infrastructure to access resources over the MPLS network. Multiple VLANs are in use across all Museums sites to support differing requirements. The Museum also has a presence in Microsoft Azure and an offsite datacentre, which is hosting a full Disaster Recovery infrastructure, but these do not form part of the existing MPLS network. The broadband connection at the Portsmouth HQ site is currently shared between 6 separate businesses onsite, each with their own public IP address(es). The Museum also has requirements to route certain services using individual public IP addresses. The current site connections are outlined in the document. Royal Navy Museums is evaluating different broadband options available and as part of this procurement, would like to consider two technologies that we believe can deliver the requirements of the business; MPLS and SD-WAN. As the Museum has been operating on an MPLS network for several years, we know that this technology can deliver the requirements. SD-WAN has previously been considered but never implemented for the Museum. The Museum is now in a position to evaluate its suitability to deliver the requirements, whilst assessing potential benefits and cost savings. This procurement has been split into two lots, representing the separate considerations for MPLS and SD-WAN. To help the Museum make an informed decision, we would like to invite suppliers to respond to both lots and pitch solutions for both MPLS and SD-WAN. This will allow the Museum to assess the benefits, operating costs and overall suitability of the two solutions to help identify which is best able to deliver the requirements over the next 3-5 years. Whilst we would encourage suppliers to respond to both lots to help inform our decision, Royal Navy Museums recognise that this may not be possible for all suppliers. Therefore, if a supplier is only able to offer a solution for one of the lots, we would still welcome their response. It should be noted that, following evaluation, only one of the two lots will be awarded depending on the suitability of each solution for the Museum. Where possible, we would like all sites to be managed under a single contract. The internal networking of our sites is out of scope of this procurement. Suppliers also do not need to include connectivity for the offsite datacentre in their proposal. Pricing The maximum budget available for the individual lots are detailed within the individual lot requirements. Cost proposals should include any installation and equipment costs, if appropriate. As part of your submission, please indicate when billing for services would be expected to start.

How this is scored

Published by the buyer. A winning response is written to these weightings, not to the question.

• 50%qualityBroadband ServicesPlease describe how you will meet the Lot 1 - MPLS broadband requirements as listed in Annex A, Scope of Works.
• 20%qualityInstallation TimelinesPlease describe your proposed broadband installation timeframes. Please describe how you will work with Royal Navy Museums to meet the installation deadline and prevent any loss in service to sites as listed in Annex A, Section 4.
• 20%qualitySupport and SLAsPlease describe how support and change requests can be raised with the support team Please fully describe the SLAs offered with the broadband services for each site. This should include SLAs for standard support/change requests, all the way through to critical circuit failures. Please describe the structure of your support team(s) and their locations
• 10%qualityEnvironmental Sustainability and Carbon ReductionPlease describe your carbon reduction targets and progress against them Please describe measures used to reduce energy consumption associated with network infrastructure, customer premises equipment, data centres and other equipment supporting the service. Please describe how routers, modems and other equipment will be repaired, reused, refurbished, recycled or responsible disposed of at end of life, including arrangements for take-back of equipment Please describe measures to minimise emissions associated with installation, maintenance and engineer visits, including use of low emission vehicles where practicable.

2 lots

You can usually bid for one lot without bidding for all of them.

• MPLS£140k

  Royal Navy Museums currently operates on an MPLS network for broadband services as described in section 2 and is considering keeping this arrangement for the future. An MPLS network will need to provide inter-site connectivity for all Museum sites listed, redundancy at every layer, a centralised internet breakout, plus firewalling and management services. As part of the firewalling services, the Museum would like to have visibility over the firewall logs and rules, with the ability to add/edit/remove rules in a timely manner (such as through a secure online portal), without needing to rely on an external supplier or support teams. It would also be useful for the internal team to have clear visibility of bandwidth usage across sites and an alerting system in place that will notify us if any circuit goes offline. It should be noted that some of our sites will require DHCP services due to a

• SD-WAN£110k

  Royal Navy Museums is considering moving away from the current MPLS setup and implementing an SD-WAN network to interlink the individual sites. For the proposed SD-WAN deployment, we would not require any centralised internet breakout, firewalling or management services that are usually associated with an MPLS network. RNM will also supply their own firewalling and routing devices for each site and manage the configuration and maintenance of these devices through an existing relationship with an MSP. In this scenario, the Museum will configure and manage the SD-WAN network and inter-site connectivity. Each site requires a leased line connection as the primary broadband solution, with an appropriate backup solution in place. The backup solution for the Portsmouth HQ site should also be a leased line. However, this should use a separate underlying telco for additional redundancy at this si

Timeline

4 published dates · Europe/London

1. Tender notice published19 days ago

   3 Sept 2026, 09:48 BST
2. Clarification questions by3 days ago

   18 Sept 2026, 17:00 BST
3. Submission deadlinein 14 days

   5 Oct 2026, 17:00 BST
4. Award decision expected byin 21 days

   12 Oct 2026, 23:59 BST

Commercial outcome and contract awards

Nothing awarded yet

Notice history

2 events · 2 releases on Find a Tender

1. Tender notice3 Sept 2026, 08:39 BST083263-2026
2. Tender updated3 Sept 2026, 09:48 BST083307-2026

Documents

• biddingDocuments
• Tender notice on Find a Tender