9191 Internal communications platform

The contract duration is eight years, structured as 5 + 1 + 1 + 1 years.

Key milestones and an anticipated program for the procurement process are as follows:

• Return of Completed PQQs: September 2026
• Issue of ITT (Invitation to Tender): October 2026
• Return of Tenders: November 2026
• Contract Award/Issue of Notifications to Tenderers: To Be Announced (TBA)

The procurement process involves two distinct stages: a pre-qualification stage and a tender stage (or award stage). The contract start date and end date are not explicitly stated, as the contract award date is still to be announced.

The core scope of work for this tender is the procurement of an Internal Communications Platform, titled "9191 INTERNAL COMMUNICATIONS PLATFORM", which is sought by Iarnród Éireann (IÉ). This platform is required to be a high availability, mobile-first solution, delivered as a fully managed Software as a Service (SaaS). It aims to support a geographically dispersed workforce of approximately 5,200–8,000 employees.

The Statement of Work summary and core deliverables include:

• The solution must be cloud-hosted within the EEA/UK and integrate with Microsoft 365 and enterprise identity systems.
• It must support secure authentication and comply with applicable Irish and EU legislative and regulatory requirements, including data protection (GDPR, Irish Data Protection Acts 1988-2018), AI, privacy, and information security obligations (CIÉ IT policies, supplier security standards aligned to ISO 27001 and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework & AI Act).
• The procurement establishes a long-term contract for the provision, configuration, operation, maintenance, and support of the platform.
• Suppliers must provide a managed service offering that encompasses implementation, configuration, training, support, service management, and documented service levels.
• The platform should support effective employee communications, engagement, audience targeting, and deliver a consistent branded user experience across both mobile and web channels.
• It must ensure continuous operation and availability to users on a 24x7x365 basis, with appropriate arrangements for maintenance, resilience, and service continuity.
• Standards-based integration capabilities for interoperability with existing and future enterprise systems (e.g., identity management, HR, communications, collaboration platforms) are required.
• Key features include an activity feed for staff interaction, push notifications/read receipts for critical messaging, and granular audience segmentation for target messaging (by role, department, location, shift, custom tags).
• A people directory with user profile information and the ability to integrate with a Content Management System if needed in the future are also specified.
• The solution should facilitate company-wide or team-specific micro-communities, supporting both automatic enrolment from the active directory and specified enrolment, with options for public or private access.
• The platform must enable the creation, management, and publication of internal information pages and content structures for intuitive navigation and content discovery, as well as an internally focused newsletter creation and distribution system.
• It should offer a unified, IÉ branded experience for news, communities, messaging, documents, and digital signage.
• Analytics on reach, engagement, and content performance with export options are required.
• The platform must support data import and export, and content creation, publication, and management in both English and Irish languages.
• It should support the storage, organisation, management, and presentation of multimedia content, including images and videos.
• The user experience should be intuitive for varying levels of digital proficiency, and the system should have the ability to launch 3rd party apps within the application.
• Suppliers need to demonstrate experience in solution and configuration migration to their proposed solution.