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

For the development, design and tendering of the CTAO-South site (Paranal Observatory, Chile) civil infrastructure, consisting in buildings, telescope foundations, roads, among others, the CTAO is seeking consultancy services in the area of Civil Engineering. The consultant will work in close contact with the CTAO-South Site Manager, the Site/Infrastructure Design and Planning Team, as well as the System Engineering team, in the following tasks:

 

  • Development of Technical tender documentation for infrastructure construction contracts.
  • Development of site supervision strategies and concepts and quality control (QC) concepts for civil infrastructure.
  • Participate in and lead (during the absence of the site manager) regular construction progress meetings.
  • Prepare, support and execute on-site inspections of subunits and complete civil infrastructure construction projects in close collaboration with the site manager and systems engineering (SE).
  • Prepare, support and execute technical acceptance processes of subunits and complete civil infrastructure construction projects in close collaboration with the site manager and SE.
  • Perform planning and engineering tasks for the CTAO-South civil infrastructure.
  • Participate in infrastructure design reviews, not limited to civil projects, but also electrical, facilities and other as civil expertise is required.
  • Support the issuance of Interface Control documents for the CTAO-South infrastructure, considering power quality requirements, in agreement with the Systems Engineering, Site/Infrastructure Design and Planning and Telescope work packages.
  • Support the CTAO Project Office teams in all issues related to the civil design, construction and construction safety of CTAO-South.
  • Supervise CTAO/ESO contractors in the area of site inspection, supervision, and QA during civil infrastructure construction.
  • Manage smaller contracts including but not limited to topography, civil laboratory services together with and on behalf of the Site Manager.
  • Support the planning, engineering, and construction of the site infrastructure for the first telescope arriving on site (MST pathfinder project).

 

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: 12.07.2023 – 23:00 CEST

Response to req. for clarifications by: 17.07.2023

Deadline for Submission of Proposals: 24.07.2023- 23:00 CEST

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