Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2018-10-17
Buyer: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 72212000: Platform-specific software programming services | 72212980 | 72250000: System and support services | 72253000: Helpdesk and support services | 72260000: Software-related services
Estimated value: 18000000 GBP

Technical requirements: EPSRC, as managing agent for the national HPC facility on behalf of the other Research Councils,is looking to tender contracts for 3 elements of the ARCHER2 facility in 2019: the hardware including maintenance and support (to be based in Edinburgh); the Service Provision (SP) which manages academic access to the facility and the helpdesk; and the Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) support which provides software development and training and support to users of the facility to enable their codes to run as effectively as possible. This procurement relates to the SP and CSE services.
Procurement is provisionally estimated to commence mid-March 2019 with issue of a Contract Notice. Further details on the requirements are within the lot descriptions.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council 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 EPSRC, NERC and beyond. 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.
EPSRC, as managing agent for the national HPC facility on behalf of the other Research Councils, is looking to tender contracts for 3 elements of the ARCHER2 facility in 2019: the hardware including maintenance and support (based in Edinburgh), the Service Provision (SP) which manages academic access to the facility and the helpdesk, and the Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) support which provides software development and training and support to users of the facility to enable their codes to run as effectively as possible.
The Service Provider will act to coordinate and interface with the elements of the ARCHER2 service such that there is a full extent of agreed cooperation and delimitation of responsibilities to provide the highest quality service to the user communities.
The main role of the service provider is to deploy, configure, maintain and upgrade the system software, system administration tools and user environments as they are made available. Such activities must be in full partnership, cooperation and collaboration with the Hardware Provider and any other parties directly impacted by those activities. The ARCHER2 service provider will be responsible for:
The service provider may be required to assume some interface responsibilities in relation to the hardware and/or CSE support contractors.
Some aspects of the service provision will be based near Edinburgh.Procurement is provisionally estimated to commence in mid-March 2019 with issue of a Contract Notice.
If you are interested in receiving further information regarding this requirement please provide contact details, company name and nature of interest to Allan Evett (allan.evett@uksbs.co.uk) or Laura Lewis (laura.lewis@uksbs.co.uk) and please reference “UKSBS PR17126 Lot1 ARCHER2 Service Provision (SP)” in your initial contact email.
Please note, there will be a period of pre-market engagement as part of this procurement which is estimated to commence in January 2019.
The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council 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


Award value: 18000000