Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2019-10-24
Buyer: UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) — Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Open procedure
CPV classification: 30211100
Estimated value: 42000000 GBP
Award criteria: The most economic tender

Technical requirements: Summary: UKRI — EPSRC, as managing agent for the national HPC facility on behalf of the other Research Councils, is tendering contracts for 3 elements of the Archer2 facility; the hardware (to be based in Edinburgh); the service provision 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 hardware element of the Archer2 service will provide the compute resource, maintenance and support including storage and network connectivity to provide enhanced provision of HPC hardware for academic scientific research. Estimated value of opportunity — 48 000 000 GBP including VAT and all applicable duties and taxes for years 1-4, plus optional year 5 maintenance and support (est. 2 400 000 GBP inc. VAT). Net values: 40 000 000 GBP years 1-4, 2 000 000 GBP optional year 5.
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 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 three elements of the Archer2 facility: the hardware (to be based in Edinburgh); the service provision 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 hardware element of the Archer2 service will provide the compute resource, maintenance and support including storage and network connectivity to provide enhanced provision of HPC hardware for academic scientific research. The maximum budget for years 1-4 including VAT and all applicable duties and taxes is 48 000 000 GBP. There will be an optional 1 year extension period for maintenance and support, including associated services, which will be priced as part of this procurement (estimated 1 500 000 GBP — 2 000 000 GBP ex VAT).
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Winner: Cray U.K. Ltd
Award value: 42000000
Number of bids: 4