Welcome to The Tide 🌊, Xoserve’s monthly newsletter, providing a summary of our progress, sharing updates and upcoming work as we navigate the waters of our UK Link modernisation programme together.

Trident’s Top Three: Our headlines for the month

1. BP25 Confidential Briefings took place in November & Project Trident Overview pack created to support Contract Managers
2. Market Engagement for Project Trident began in November
3. What’s next - Vision for 2025

BP25 Confidential Briefings

We held a valuable BP25 confidential briefing session for DSC Contract Managers on the 11 November, giving us the opportunity:

1. To provide further detail on Project Trident investment within BP25.
2. To share how the investment maps to the additional resources and activities.
3. To share what you will see next for Project Trident Stakeholder Engagement. 

We had excellent attendance, as well as some fantastic questions raised, which generated several follow up discussions related to Project Trident governance and customer engagement as we progress next year. We want to thank all the Contract Managers who attended the briefing.

Our Project Trident Governance Overview has been shared on our Project Trident page show how we will manage the project through this pre-competitive period.

The briefing Q&As were published on our BP25 portal, excluding commercially sensitive questions and points. All questions specific to Project Trident have also been added to our dedicated project query log.

Market Engagement

In mid-November, in line with our indicative timelines, we began Market Engagement to gain a perspective from potential service providers for Project Trident.

WHAT DID WE ASK THE MARKET TO RESPOND TO:  

We asked a range of questions including:

• What their perspective was of the viability of the 6 options we presented in our Economic case of the SOC (section 3) to address our core Trident challenges
• What the risks and opportunities of Trident are; what we should include as part of our delivery approach to maximise the chance of success
• What the key procurement “lots” are that they would be interested in bidding for (e.g. build of a new solution, run of the new solution); whether they would need to sub-contract/act as part of a consortium
• What commercial constructs they would be interested in operating under were they to be awarded preferred bidder status

WHAT DID WE GET BACK AND WHAT IS NEXT:

22 suppliers registered for a briefing event, and we received 17 responses by the 10 December deadline. We have begun to analyse the outputs, which will be used to further assess the six options in the SOC and inform our sourcing strategy for our formal procurement next summer. 

What's next - Vision for 2025 

2025 is set to be an exciting year for Project Trident, as we complete our market engagement for service provision, and develop that engagement into finalised procurement activities. We are working to onboard the main vendors by the end of Q4 2025, and enter into those early design activities.

Whilst procurement and sourcing progresses, we continue to build out our Outline Business Case (OBC), in line with HM Treasury Green Book methodology. This will involve us continuing to map our existing architecture to the defined solution options and understanding impact across each scenario, as well as the operating models required for delivery into the future.

Looking further into the year, our major milestone will be the completion and publication of our Full Business Case (FBC), which will deliver industry with the clarity around our recommended solution option and the resources involved to delivery over the coming years.

Reflecting on 2024, I’ve been really encouraged and appreciative of the engagement from our customer base around Project Trident and pleased with how the project initiation and Strategic Outline Case has been delivered. We have a fantastic team in place and working diligently to deliver for, and with customers at the heart of our decision making and engagement priorities.

May I take this opportunity to thank you all for your engagement to date, and wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year – see you in 2025!

Nick Partridge

Project Director

And finally...our Project Trident homepage is evolving!

You can now find our useful subscription link on the right of the page, where you can let us know what CDSP strategic topics you’re interested in hearing about. Once you’re receiving our strategic communications, you can always change these preferences at any time using the “manage preferences” link at the base of our new emails.

If you have any early feedback on the newsletter, it's content or what you’d like to see next, please email us via communications@xoserve.com. Otherwise stay tuned for more updates and thank you for your continued support.

Catch the next wave in 2025, but until then, have a wonderful festive period, and a very Happy New Year! 🎅