Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2020-11-09
Buyer: Aarhus Universitet
Country: DK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 33100000 | 38000000
Estimated value: 17000000 DKK
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: IVC Racks, Cages and Trolleys and Ventilation Units to an Existing System in the Animal Facility at Aarhus University
Aarhus University wants to increase the capacity for housing laboratory animals within the newly established Animal Facility in the Skou Building. This involves fully equipping a new animal housing room with racks with individually ventilated cages (IVC), including an automatic watering system (AWS), and trolleys for transporting IVC cages, and ventilating units supplying the cages in the racks with HEPA-filtered and humidity-controlled air.
The Animal Facility (at Department of Biomedicine) at Aarhus University supports biomedical research and constantly works on securing that the high standards for animal welfare and scientific quality and output are met. This involves complying to legislative and regulatory requirements and creating the best possible environment for robust scientific work minimizing bias and variation during housing and handling of animals.
The Animal Facility has a fully integrated flow of IVC cages that are placed in dedicated IVC racks in each animal housing room. Each IVC rack is supplied with HEPA-filtered and humidity-controlled air by a ventilation unit that has an integrated surveillance and alarm system. In each housing room all IVC racks and cages are supplied with and prepared for the centrally controlled automated watering system (AWS) that also has an integrated surveillance and alarm system.
After changing cages in the animal housing rooms, the cages are transported on cage-specific and dedicated trolleys from the animal housing rooms to the central washing room within the Animal Facility. In the washing room, all trolleys and cages are identified and handled by a fully automated washing robot. The washing robot empties the dirty bedding from the cages into the dirty bedding system, washes and dries the cages and subsequently fills the cages with clean bedding before stacking cages on a clean trolley ready for autoclaving before being trolleyed back to the animal housing rooms and used.
The existing system in the Animal Facility is composed of Green Line IVC racks and cages (from Tecniplast). All IVC racks and cages are adapted and compatible with the Edstrom AWS from Avidity Science. Trolleys and the washing robot, a Pegasus Cage Automation system, is from IWT, a Tecniplast company. The ventilation units are ScanClimes for IVC, including ScanEye, from Scanbur.
The equipment and inventory for the new animal housing room must be fully compatible with the existing system in the Animal Facility.
• IVC racks must be installed with an automatic watering system that is compatible with the existing AWS and cages must be adapted accordingly.;
• Ventilation units must be fully compatible with the IVC racks and must supply HEPA-filtered and humidity-controlled air and have an integrated surveillance and alarm system.
In addition, laboratory animals are very sensitive to environmental changes, including changes in type and design of cages. Environmental changes can potentially affect and compromise the validity and results of experimental studies. To ensure that housing of laboratory animals impose as little variation on animals as possible, it is important that standardized housing conditions are used. Besides the ambient temperature and humidity, lighting and light cycle, and food and bedding and nesting material, this also includes the physical design of the cage.
• 1400 units of GM500 cages, including lids, prepared for AWS, plus 50 % washing buffer of cage bottoms (Tecniplast);
• 1 400 units of GM500 cages, including lids, prepared for AWS, plus 50 % washing buffer of cage bottoms (Tecniplast);
The combination of requirements described above are fulfilled exclusively by one supplier. The possibility that there are other potential suppliers who could deliver the same has been objectively excluded by market consultations.
After exploring the market, we are of the opinion that only one company can deliver a fully integrated solution for additional IVC racks, cages, ventilation units and trolleys that can be sufficiently adapted to the present workflow and systems, and subsequently produce reliable and valid results and support robust scientific data.
Following the notification, a standstill period of 10 calendar days will be held in accordance to paragraph 3 of Act No 593 of 2 June 2016 on the Danish Act on the Complaints Board for public Procurement. This implies that the contracting authority cannot sign the contract with the winning tenderer before the standstill period has expired.


Winner: Scanbur A/S
Award value: 17000000