Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2020-02-19
Buyer: Met Office
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Competitive dialogue
CPV classification: 72000000 | 72100000 | 72212660 | 72222300: Information technology services | 72228000: Equipment integration consultancy services
Estimated value: 854000000 GBP
Submission deadline: 2020-03-20
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: Υπηρεσίες τεχνολογίας των πληροφοριών: παροχή συμβουλών, ανάπτυξη λογισμικού, Διαδίκτυο και υποστήριξη
The Met Office is seeking to procure supercomputing capability via the delivery of a fully integrated service from 2022 through to 2032.
Access to the procurement documents is free and unrestricted to all those signing a confidentiality agreement with the Met Office (see Section II.2.4 below). Further information can be obtained at the Met Office's e-Tendering Portal: https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/supplying-the-met-office/procurement and requests to participate and tenders must be submitted electronically via the Met Office's e-Tendering Portal.
The Met Office has historically procured replacement supercomputing hardware, software and associated storage and scientific computer platforms at approximately 5-year intervals, and typically supported such infrastructure within its own hosting facilities. An exciting new longer-term approach has been selected to meet the Met Office’s strategic goal of ‘Delivering our Future Supercomputing Capability’ and to achieve this through a new aggregated supercomputing capability delivery model.
This contract notice is to announce the procurement of this supercomputing capability through a fully-integrated service over a 10-year contract period which will encompass a technology refresh at the 5-year point. The contract may be extended by up to a further 2 years subject to a Met Office requirement to extend the life of the new capability and subject to any additional approvals and funding that may be required.
1) U (Umbrella): Overarching implementation services and operational services to the extent not addressed in Packages A-E below required to enable the provision of the integration solution;
2) A: Provision of specialist hosting facilities and supporting operational services with capacity to host at least Package B below but not excluding the hosting of Packages D and E below if incorporated into the bidder's proposed integrated solution;
3) B: Provision of supercomputing capacity including associated storage systems (to the extent not included in Package D below), software and the supporting operational services;
4) C: Provision of interconnectivity requirements, including site to site data communications between:
5) D: Provision of data storage in a Managed Archival Storage System (‘MASS’) and/or archive platform and supporting operational services including maintaining the Met Office's existing MOOSE (Met Office Operational Storage Environment) data access software layer;
6) E: Provision of scientific processing integrated compute environment (‘SPICE’) post processing computer platform.
Please note that the Met Office reserves the right, in its absolute discretion, to remove Package D from the Supercomputing 2020+ procurement (or make any other amendments to the packages as the Met Office sees fit).
(a) Generation 1: supercomputing capability from 2022 with a 6-times uplift in capacity for an initial 5-year period;
(b) Generation 2: Replacement supercomputing in 2027 with a further capacity uplift for the subsequent 5-year period.
The Met Office requires at least 50 % of the supercomputing capacity to be located in the United Kingdom in order to protect essential public interests. The balance may be located outside the UK, provided the bidder can satisfy the Met Office that the regulatory and legal environment in which the balance is located does not pose a risk to availability of the services.


Award value: 854000000