Procurement

Opportunities for collaboration in the construction of the CTAO

Industry

Building the largest gamma-ray observatory on the planet requires great investment, people and resources. With facilities, activities and partners worldwide, it is clear that the CTAO will have a social and economic impact in countries around the world, both through direct procurement processes and indirectly through its In-Kind Contribution teams. In this sense, the CTAO is a multidimensional endeavor whose collaborations and activities comprises a multitude of different fields, from science institutions to industries, from day-to-day services to long-term investments.

Industry Procurement Opportunities

CTAO’s procurement initiative is to collaborate with industry in an open and unbiased way in order to achieve the best possible results for the execution of its mission. The establishment of the CTAO ERIC, expected in summer 2023, is a fundamental milestone in the more than thirty-year lifetime of the Observatory.

 

The beginning of this legal entity ends the design phase and initiates the construction and operation phase of the Observatory. The CTAO foresees a significant increase in the annual investment of the CTAO ERIC over the coming years. The total CTAO ERIC’s investment value for the period 2022-2026 and beyond is around 270 million euros, which include in-kind contributions from member organisations. Such investment brings a range of opportunities of cooperation between scientific research and engineering and technology businesses, as well as other companies at a global level.

 

This page will promote the invitations to tender for the CTAO gGmbH and its In-Kind Contributors. Those interested in opportunities with the consortium design teams are encouraged to contact the team leaders found throughout the Construction Project page of this website.

Main Investment Areas

  • Construction and related facilities: temporary construction camps; design, study, inspection, certification services for temporary camp installations; local CTAO offices; mechanical and electrical workshops and warehouses; outfitting of control rooms; computing rooms and other facilities, etc.
  • Detector and calibration instruments development: telescope foundation design and construction at both sites; construction of telescopes, including camera systems; Integration and testing of computing software; calibration system engineering, including hardware and software of all-sky cameras, ceilometers, LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) systems, aerosol monitoring systems and muon calibration systems; environmental monitoring instruments, including earthquake detection and monitoring systems, etc.
  • Electrical and mechanical systems: construction preparation for data network and electrical cables; low voltage distribution system construction; backup power systems, including dynamic UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) systems; power distribution system design, including electrical power distribution system at medium and low voltage level to all consumers, etc.
  • Information and Communication Technologies: document management systems; IT hardware and software; user networks at the sites and facilities; tools to support collaborative software development, such as repositories, wikis, issue tracking, as well as tools to enhance software quality, such as systems for continuous integration and software quality inspection tools; common software tools and libraries, used across all major software systems to ensure that computing products share an implementation and interface; software architecture support and applications to support all architecture activities in the computing work packages and over the full life-cycle of the project, etc.

Current CTAO gGmbH and In-Kind Contributors opportunities:

Civil Engineering Consultancy Services for the CTAO

To help with the development, design and tendering of the observatory civil infrastructure the CTAO is seeking Civil Construction Engineer consultancy services. In close contact with the CTAO Site Managers, the Site/Infrastructure Design and Planning Team and the CTAO Systems Engineering Team, the consultant shall perform the following tasks:

 

  • Provide engineering support during the civil infrastructure design process, including creating
    drawings and CAD models to be used in construction.
  • Update and maintain existing technical drawings including maintenance of a drawings
    database (BIM360).
  • Review designs to ensure they meet industry standards, including building codes and
    applicable regulations.
  • Create layouts of rooms or civil structures that include measurements, drawings, and other
    information about the design.
  • Working with the CTAO architect and engineers, create computer models of structures using
    specialized software such as AutoCAD and BIM.
  • Develop documentation for the construction project, including floor plans and renderings
    of proposed designs.
  • Assist the issuance of technical specifications for civil construction contracts.
  • Support the development of Civil Inspections and QA plans as well as on-site inspections

Depending on the physical location of the consultant, the work shall be performed either in home office or at one of the CTAO offices in Bologna (Italy), La Palma (Spain), or in Chile. Depending on the tasks, visits to the Project Office in Bologna (Italy) might be necessary. The consultant may be expected to travel to the observatory sites, if necessary, for the performance of the design and engineering tasks. Travel cost will be borne by CTAO; Travel Regulations of CTAO will apply. The duration of the contract will be 1 (one) year, eventually renewable only at CTAO’s discretion for another year.

 

All information is available in the Tender Dossier documents (Request for Proposals and Annex I, Annex II, Annex III, Annex IV and Annex V).

 

Request for clarification should be submitted in writing by email to ctao-procurement@cta-observatory.org

All responses, which are considered by CTAO to be of a substantive nature, will be sent in anonymous way to all applicants invited to submit a proposal. Any questions that are of a sensitive nature must be clearly identified as such on submission.

 

Deadline for request for clarifications: 20.11.2023 – 23:00 CET

Response to req. for clarifications by: 24.11.2023

Deadline for Submission of Proposals: 01.12.2023- 23:00 CET

Tender for the Supply of the Electromechanical Structures of the Small-Sized Telescopes (SST)

TENDER FOR THE SUPPLY OF THE ELECTROMECHANICAL STRUCTURES FOR THE CTAO ARRAY OF SMALL-SIZED TELESCOPES (SST), INCLUDING SUBSYSTEMS AND ALL ACTIVITIES RELATED TO AND NECESSARY FOR THEIR INSTALLATION.

 

An international consortium of institutes led by INAF, the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics, will provide the SST telescopes as an in-kind contribution to the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO). The SST will be installed at the CTAO Southern Array Site in the Chilean Andes. More information available on the CTAO website: https://www.cta-observatory.org.

 

This tender deals with the design, production, assembling, shipping, on-site integration, calibration, and verification of up to 25 SST telescopes. This is the first of two tenders for producing the SST electromechanical structures that the SST consortium will issue. INAF has issued this first tender; the second one will be issued by CNRS at the end of next year or early 2025. In both cases, we will use the same design, making identical structures.

 

In February 2023, the SST Consortium went through the Product Review organized with CTAO. Thanks to that, the preliminary design of the telescope and its subsystems, the organization and the management plan of the consortium and the programmatic schedule were approved, providing the input documentation for this tender.

 

Each SST Telescope (SST-TEL) is composed of 4 subsystems:

  • SST-MEC (electro-mechanical structure including Mount, Optical Support Structure, Electrical & Control System Cabinets, Protection System, Auxiliary Devices, Maintenance and AIT/V Tools)
  • SST-OPT (the Optics consisting in M1 and M2 mirrors)
  • SST-TCS (the high-level SW that manages the telescope subsystems)
  • SST-CAM (the camera Cherenkov)

 

This tender specifically regards the supply and implementation in Chile of the SST electromechanical structures. It includes all activities and deliverables throughout the various development phases of the production of the SST Telescopes and their installation, aiming at:

 

  • consolidating the preliminary SST-MEC sub-system design approved at the Product Review;
  • addressing the preliminary SST-MEC electro-mechanical design towards the CDR reviews till the final approved version
  • providing the entire set of 3D design and construction documentation (including the definition of all the subsystems and materials to be used for the production, AIV plans, handbook maintenance plans and documentation);
  • realizing up to 25 SST electromechanical structures, including the Mount system, Optical Support Structure, Electrical System, Telescope Protection System, Auxiliary Devices, Software and Maintenance Tool;
  • assembling, integrating and testing the first SST-TEL on-factory (including the optics and the focal plane camera);
  • managing all the shipment activities related to SST-MEC and SST-OPT sub-systems;
  • assembling, calibrating and testing up to 25 SST-TEL onsite (including the optics and the focal plane camera).

 

All information related to the Tender Dossier can be retrieved on the Italian version of the TED called GUUE (Gazzetta Ufficiale Unione Europea) at the following link: https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:627941-2023:TEXT:IT:HTML

 

Please note that the Tender Documentation (except for the SoW and related applicable and reference documents) is in Italian.

 

Deadline for Submission of Proposals: 24.11.2023 – 23:00 CEST

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