RAICo - Radiation Hot Cell Through Wall Manipulators

A Contract Award Notice
by UNITED KINGDOM ATOMIC ENERGY AUTHORITY

Source: Find a Tender
Type: Contract (Goods)
Duration: not specified
Value: £454K

Sector: INDUSTRIAL
Published: 10 Feb 2023
Delivery: not specified
Deadline: n/a

Concepts

Location

United Kingdom: TBD (Whitehaven, Cumbria or Culham, Oxfordshire

Geochart for 1 buyers and 1 suppliers

1 buyer

United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Abingdon

1 supplier

Wälischmiller Engineering Markdorf

Description

UKAEA RACE - RAICo are investigating the use of through wall manipulators in hazardous nuclear decommissioning site locations. The development and ultimate deployment of high technology, high performing handling systems is a key element in addressing numerous use cases that have been aligned with the RAICo programme. In doing so, RAICo will play a vital part in removing operators from high hazard nuclear decommissioning environments, providing a safe remote working environment, hot cells with a remote handling capability being one example of these. This PIN seeks to determine the current and future market capability in terms of candidate robot manipulators that are, or could be, capable of operating in place of human operators in a hot cell environment.

Total Quantity or Scope

Robotic through wall manipulators capable of operating in hazardous radiation hot cell environments in place of human operators.

Award Detail

1	Wälischmiller Engineering (Markdorf) Supply of a Radiation Hardened Through Wall Manipulator Reference: 004104-2023-contract not awarded yet-1 Value: £454,396

CPV Codes

42997300 - Industrial robots

Legal Justification

The authority published a prior information notice calling for expressions of interest from suppliers who either had an existing or were developing a product capable of meeting our base performance envelope. We received four responses with the outcomes as follows: 1 - Responded that they could not meet the requirements either now or in the future so were discounted. 2 - Responded that they had a product, but when we requested a meeting to discuss in more detail they confirmed they had no offering and declined our meeting stating this was not something they could supply. 3 - WMH indicated they could meet our requirement. 4 - Another supplier also indicated they could provide a suitable product and we continue to have discussions with them As it was the authority's intention to purchase more than one manipulator from different suppliers we concluded running a formal tender process was not good use of taxpayers funds and decided on a direct award process to one or both of the two respondents to our PIN, who indicated that they could meet our technical as outlined, this is subject to us assessing the quotes as being VFM..