Public procurement notice: Contract Notice
Published: 2020-06-16
Buyer: Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY
Country: DE
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Competitive procedure with negotiation
CPV classification: 72000000 | 72210000: Software programming services | 72211000: Systems and user software programming services | 72212000: Platform-specific software programming services | 72212461
Submission deadline: 2020-07-13
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: DESY: Software Development Support of the Array Control and Date Acquisition System (ACADA) Deliverables of DESY for CTA
DESY is one of the world's leading accelerator centres. Researchers use the large-scale facilities at DESY to explore the microcosm in all its variety. Zeuthen is (besides Hamburg) the second location of DESY, located in the south-eastern outskirts of Berlin. Since 2011, the DESY Zeuthen campus has been profiled as a globally visible center for astroparticle physics. DESY Zeuthen is involved in several international research projects in astroparticle physics.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the planned next generation observatory for ground-based very-high-energy gamma-ray astronomy [RD1]. In order to provide full sky coverage, CTA will consist of two large arrays with 118 Cherenkov telescopes in total, to be deployed in the Southern (Paranal, Chile) and Northern (La Palma, Spain) Hemispheres. The southern array will be sensitive to entire energy range of CTA. The northern array will focus on low- and mid-energy ranges. In addition to a large number of scientific instruments, CTA will comprise three types of telescopes covering different energy ranges: Small sized telescopes (SST) to cover the highest energy gamma-rays, medium sized telescopes (MST) to cover the core energy range of CTA and large sized telescopes (LST) sensitive to low-energy gamma-rays.
The total duration of the contract is 4 years from the date it is notified to the successful tenderer. The total estimated man-hours for the entire scope of work is 11 000 hours.
The selected company will allocate individuals within 4 weeks to match the required manpower and skills described in the technical specifications.
The selected company will support the DESY team in the implementation and testing of the different software components, which are described in the technical specifications detailed. It will include the following parts
The Resource Manager and Central Control (RM&CC) that is responsible for the execution of the scheduling blocks (SBs) provided by the short-term scheduler. The RM&CC interprets the SBs and sends the corresponding commands to the telescopes and other controllable array elements, while supervising the ongoing operations, coordinating the allocation of telescopes to subarrays and overseeing the Array Data Handler. The RM&CC supervises all other systems of ACADA and any external system under its supervision such as the telescope control systems. The subcomponents of the RM&CC are the Resource Manager, the Central Control and the system supervision support libraries.
The Human Machine Interface (HMI) subsystem that offers a comprehensive view of the status of the observations to the operators and support astronomer located in the control room of the CTA installation, providing means to interact with the array elements.
The transients handler (TH) subsystem responsible for managing internal and external transient science alert candidates by filtering, processing and ranking them, submitting scheduling blocks to the short-term scheduler and requesting immediate reaction if needed.
Stress and distributed tests of the RM&CC, HMI and TH subsystems. These tests will require to mock-up up to 100 telescopes and to put the system under stress conditions using the DESY test cluster environment. In addition to the stress tests, additional tests of the resilience of the system are required in order to evaluate the capabilities of the ACADA system as a whole, as well as its most critical components such as the resource manager (e.g. supervision tree). A report with the test metrics will be provided.
Further information on options is contained in the procurement documents and the contract (see also below, point II.2.11).
The selection criteria for the evaluation of eligibility are ability (economic and financial ability) and expertise (technical and professional ability). The above criteria will be assessed on the basis of the documents to be submitted under section III.1) of this notice.
Ability and expertise are in a ratio of 30 % (ability) to 70 % (expertise). For the assessment of the ability, the information and evidence referred to point III.1.2) (WL1) are used. For the assessment of the expertise, the information and evidence mentioned in point III.1.3) (TL1 and TL2) shall be taken into account. The assessment of ability and expertise is based on a relative comparison of the applicants on the basis of the following grading scale.
— 10 points: applicant is excellently suited due to the size and equipment of the company and his experience;
— 8 points: applicant is well suited due to the size and equipment of the company and his experience;

Eligibility requirements: Documents submitted must still be valid; where up-to-date requirements are made, the date refers to the date of publication of this notice (see point VI.5). Applicants must submit the following documents or documents with their application: PL1. Self-declaration regarding exclusion criteria (§ 123, 124 GWB). The form in the application documents shall be used. PL2. A short description of the company historical background, describing experiences with projects similar to those presented here (up to 15 pages in total, self-declaration, see checklist in application documents). In the case of candidate consortia, the requirements set out here apply accordingly to each individual member of the candidate consortia. DESY reserves the right to request further self-declarations and certificates for bidders selected at the end of the competition and any subcontractors with the submission of the tender separate request.