Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2019-07-24
Buyer: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 72230000: Custom software development services | 72500000 | 72510000: Computer-related management services
Estimated value: 17800000 GBP
Submission deadline: 2019-09-30
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: The ARCHER2 (Academic Research Computing High End Resource) HPC service is to be located at the Advanced Computing Facility (ACF) near Edinburgh and will be provided by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) to commence 6.5.2020.
The service will comprise of hardware (already tendered), the Service Provision (SP) which manages academic access to the facility and the helpdesk, and Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) which provides software development and training and support to users of the facility to enable their codes to run as effectively as possible. The SP [Lot (a)] and CSE [Lot (b)] are the subject of this procurement.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) manages the ARCHER supercomputer service on behalf of the high performance computing (HPC) scientific user communities.
This multi-million pound investment, which commenced service in 2013, provides national capability for scientific research across the HEI sector requiring access to high performance computing resources. Supporting a community of academic researchers across the UK, ARCHER provides a prestigious national Tier 1 compute resource for scientific endeavour. As provider of the national HPC service supporting researchers in diverse scientific fields, EPSRC currently manages the provision and support of the ARCHER service. A future capital investment will secure the next generation of HPC service and ensure provision of new HPC architecture capable of addressing the demands of increasing complexity in scientific research.
The overall vision for ARCHER2 is to build on the existing Tier 1 and Tier 2 investments in national HPC facilities so that the UK is a recognised leader on the international scene for computational science and engineering. In order to achieve this, UK researchers must be able to carry out internationally competitive research across the remits of UKRI. The benefits of the UK being world leading in computational science and engineering will be realised through:
— the increased ability of UK researchers to make valuable contributions to the solution of complex scientific challenges and to the generation of quality scientific outputs,
— increased attractiveness of UK researchers as partners in high profile international collaborations and improved access to large HPC resources in other countries.
UKRI has tendered the hardware requirement and is now looking to tender contracts for the service elements of the ARCHER2 facility namely, the Service Provision (SP) [Lot (a)] which manages academic access to the facility and the helpdesk; and the Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) support [Lot (b)] which provides software development and training and support to users of the facility to enable their codes to run as effectively as possible.
The proposed contract will include a period of mobilisation followed by an initial period of 4 years, with a further one year extension possible. The maximum budget for Lot (a) SP is 7 200 000 GBP (excluding VAT) for the full period.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) manages the ARCHER supercomputer service on behalf of the high performance computing (HPC) scientific user communities.
This multi-million pound investment, which commenced service in 2013, provides national capability for scientific research across the HEI sector requiring access to high performance computing resources. Supporting a community of academic researchers across the UK, ARCHER provides a prestigious national Tier 1 compute resource for scientific endeavour. As provider of the national HPC service supporting researchers in diverse scientific fields, EPSRC currently manages the provision and support of the ARCHER service. A future capital investment will secure the next generation of HPC service and ensure provision of new HPC architecture capable of addressing the demands of increasing complexity in scientific research.
The overall vision for ARCHER2 is to build on the existing Tier 1 and Tier 2 investments in national HPC facilities so that the UK is a recognised leader on the international scene for computational science and engineering. In order to achieve this, UK researchers must be able to carry out internationally competitive research across the remits of UKRI. The benefits of the UK being world leading in computational science and engineering will be realised through:
— the increased ability of UK researchers to make valuable contributions to the solution of complex scientific challenges and to the generation of quality scientific outputs,
— increased attractiveness of UK researchers as partners in high profile international collaborations and improved access to large HPC resources in other countries.
UKRI has tendered the hardware requirement and is now looking to tender contracts for the service elements of the ARCHER2 facility namely, the Service Provision (SP) [Lot (a)] which manages academic access to the facility and the helpdesk; and the Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) support [Lot (b)] which provides software development and training and support to users of the facility to enable their codes to run as effectively as possible.

Eligibility requirements: Please see procurement documentation.

Award value: 17800000