Pipeline Framework: OPEN – Development and Funding Partner

A pipeline has been launched for OPEN – Development and Funding Partner.The contract start Date is 17 January 2025. Approach to market date is 22 November 2023.OPDC (Old Oak Park Royal Development Corporation) is a Mayoral Development Corporation, established by the Mayor of London with a statutory objective to secure the regeneration of the area, which spans land across three London boroughs: Ealing, Brent, and Hammersmith & Fulham. It is London’s largest opportunity area, covering over 650 hectares. Over the next 20 years 25,500 homes and 65,000 jobs will be delivered.In accordance with the Mayor of London’s net zero target date of 2020, OPDC are looking to develop a low carbon energy network (Old Oak and Park Royal Energy Network – OPEN) to serve a significant proportion of their planned developments, as well as helping decarbonise homes and businesses in the wider area. The network is proposed to capture low grade waste heat that is being produced by data centres in the vicinity. This waste heat will then be piped to energy centres, and elevated to temperatures suitable for supply into buildings via heat pumps. At full build-out, OPDC estimate that the network will deliver over 80GWh of heat a year to around 50 sites via a network of over 7km pipework.OPDC will go to market for a development and funding partner with whom they will set up a Special Purpose Vehicle with which to deliver, operate and maintain the system over the next 40 or so years. The scheme will operate within a standalone Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), where the majority owner of that SPV will be responsible for raising the funding required for the development costs for the project and any ongoing investment in capital. (A contract value of £17m has been stated for year 1 of full operation – this is expected to be the annual amount for the lifetime of the project.)The procurement process is managed by Transport for London on behalf of OPDC. The opportunity will be published on Find a Tender and will start with a supplier pre-qualification stage. The documentation to be published will include information on the proposed terms of the JV agreement.In order for suppliers to participate in the competition, they will need to register with TfL’s eProcurement portal SAP Ariba. Adding suppliers to a competition is a manual process; we recommend, therefore, to complete registration as soon as possible. The registration does not constitute any form of contractual commitment but will be a prerequisite for participating in the competition. Please contact us for further instructions.This is a potential opportunity from the government, and the pipeline gives advance notice of an opportunity that might be offered by the public sector in the future – allowing potential suppliers to plan accordingly. When a public sector organisation publishes a pipeline notice, it does not necessarily mean that an opportunity will be offered in the future.For more information contact: Transport for London, 5 Endeavour Square, London E20 1JN. Email: v_SabineNemeth@tfl.gov.uk Website: