Advanced Contract Award Notice (ACAN) - Marine Fibre Route Assessment for DND

Summary

The Department of National Defence (DND) intends to award a contract to NorthwestTel for a comprehensive marine fibre route assessment across Arctic regions. The requirement is for a fully integrated offshore geophysical and geotechnical survey between Happy Valley Goose Bay, NL and Iqaluit, NU, including approaches to Cartwright and Saglek, NL. This survey will assess existing and potential telecommunication infrastructure options and provide an engineering-grade dataset suitable for subsea fibre optic cable route design, burial assessment, armouring specification, and pre-manufacturing preparation under defence reliability and resilience requirements. The scope encompasses an integrated turnkey survey including offshore geophysical survey acquisition, deepwater geotechnical investigation, nearshore and intertidal survey, topographic landfall survey, and data processing with engineering-ready deliverables. The work supports sovereign northern connectivity and Arctic defence infrastructure planning and must be completed within the 2026 Arctic seasonal operating window with full delivery by October 1, 2026. The contractor must demonstrate prior experience delivering comparable fully integrated subsea cable route surveys in Arctic or sub-Arctic offshore environments, with proven Arctic vessel capacity, deepwater geotechnical capability, and Inuit participation readiness.

Description