Reality Emulator - Notification of Future Opportunity and Market Engagement Event

Contract summary

Industry

• IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support - 72000000

Location of contract

BS1 5DS

Procurement reference

tender_240917/978682

Published date

8 July 2021

Closing date

25 August 2021

Contract is suitable for SMEs?

Yes

Contract is suitable for VCSEs?

No

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Description

1. The Opportunity:
The University of Bristol is seeking to undertake a competitive procedure for the development and supply of a Reality Emulator. This is an exciting opportunity for the successful Supplier to be part of a highly innovative project which seeks to create an open and accessible facility to enable experience-driven sociotechnical research i.e. to allow the creation of increasingly large and complex future scenarios, and to allow many such scenarios to be supported concurrently.

The University has recently undertaken tenders via the open procedure for the equipment, however due to a re-evaluation and a subsequent change to University's own internal constraints, these procurement exercises were discontinued. This new opportunity seeks to engage with the market in a collaborative and innovative way via a different procedure.

The Reality Emulator will be a unique physical-virtual environment, which will allow the study of complex sociotechnical systems at different scales, in different contexts, and at different stages, (from early-stage technologies through to embedded social systems) addressing fundamental research questions about technical development, social change commercial models, security, ethics, policy and legislation. This will be achieved by creating digital models of physical environments / scientific phenomena, ingesting real world data, and studying the outcomes in the immersive facilities. This new facility will include: 1) state of the art software defined connectivity services both internally and with the city/region established testbeds, including 5/6G. 2) a virtualised datacentre environment, providing compute, data, network, and security services. 3)ultra-high-performance, reconfigurable hardware platforms (e.g. FGPAs and Neuromorphic devices 4) advanced immersive reality facilities (a cave and VR/AR environments) 5) diverse internet facing services for supporting smart infrastructures and ingestion of data.
The new tender is intended to be released end of August 2021; this PIN serves to notify the market of this upcoming tender opportunity only and is not a call for competition.

2. Market Engagement Presentation Events
In order to engage and advise the market fully of the detail of this ambitious opportunity we are holding market presentations on the following date:
- 16th July 2021 - 9.30 - 10.30 (the session will be recorded for suppliers unable to attend)

The presentations shall include details of the proposed requirements and new updates to both technical and the proposed contracting approach.
The presentations shall also cover the proposed procurement and tendering procedure to be used; this is currently intended to be Competitive Dialogue.

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More information

Additional text

3. Supplier Networking
As part of this market engagement, and due the complexity of the requirement, we are also enabling the event as a networking opportunity for all potential Suppliers. Suppliers, of all sizes and specialities, as part of this event, will be able to make introductions should they wish to explore possible partnering/sub-contracting opportunities.
(Note. The University is not seeking to be part of/party to decision making towards Supplier-Supplier engagement, this is at Supplier's discretion and choice, merely we are facilitating the opportunity should this be of interest to Suppliers).

4. Feedback Questionnaire and 1 to 1 Sessions
As part of preparing for the tender, the University is seeking Supplier feedback to the requirement and proposed approach. To enable this, we will share a brief questionnaire with Suppliers to support us in capturing this important information. We welcome and encourage this reply from all Suppliers at all levels in the market, even where they may not be able to attend a 1 to 1 session (see below).
After the presentations, we are also holding a limited number of 1 to 1s sessions with Suppliers to allow further exploration of the feedback questionnaire and any other feedback/solutions/considerations.
The 1 to 1 sessions will be held in 30min slots on the following dates:
- 20th July 2021
- 21st July 2021
- 27th July 2021
- 30th July 2021
Suppliers will be provided opportunity to sign up a 1 to 1 session on a first come first serve basis.

5. Contact
To register for the Presentations, 1 to 1 sessions and receive a feedback questionnaire, Supplier should register via the University e-procurement portal:
https://tenders.bris.ac.uk/

Suppliers can also raise any queries via the same link, once registered to the Reality Emulator Market Engagement Event.

In issuing this PIN and seeking to engage with the market, the University makes no commitment to undertake these procurements. Non-participation by economic operators in the aforementioned market consultations will not be taken into account in any future procurement activities and will not preclude and/or prejudice any economic operator from tendering for the provision of these goods and services.

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About the buyer

Address

4th Floor, Augustine's Courtyard, Orchard Lane
Bristol
BS1 5DS
England

Email

ds14720@bristol.ac.uk