VOLUNTARY EX ANTE TRANSPARENCY NOTICE

Section I: Contracting Authority/Entity

I.1)

Name, Address and Contact Point(s)

I.2)

Type of contracting Authority and Main Activity or Activities

Ministry or any other national or federal authority, including their regional or local sub-divisions National or federal agency/Office Regional or local Authority Regional or local Agency/Office Body governed by public law European Institution/Agency or International Organisation

General public services Defence Public order and safety Environment Economic and financial affairs Health Housing and community amenities Social protection Recreation, culture and religion Education Other (Please specify): Biomedical research

Section II: Object of the Contract

II.1)

Description

II.1.1)

Title attributed to the contract by the contracting authority

VEAT For Chrpmatography Mass Spectrometer For Metabolomics Lipidomics — Sole Source

II.1.2(a))

Type of works contract

II.1.2(b))

Type of supplies contract

Purchase		Rent		Lease
Hire-purchase		Combination of these

II.1.2(c))

Type of service contract

II.1.2)

Main site or location of works, place of delivery or performance

1 Midland Road, London, NW1 1AT

II.1.3)

This notice involves a framework agreement

II.1.4)

Short description of the contract or purchase(s)

The Francis Crick institute ('The Crick) is a biomedical research institute dedicated to understanding the scientific mechanisms of living things. It works to find new ways to treat, diagnose, and prevent illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, stroke, infections and neurodegenerative diseases.

The Francis Crick Institute metabolomics science technology platform (STP) seeks to purchase a mass spectrometer and believes that there is only one model on the market which can provide this chromatography speed and phospholipid labelling analyses. We would like to declare our intention to purchase this as a single source.

II.1.5)

Common Procurement Vocabulary (CPV)

II.1.6)

Contract covered by the government procurement agreement (GPA)

II.2)

Total final value of the contract(s)

II.2.1)

Total final value of the contract(s)

Section IV: Procedure

IV.1)

Type of procedure

IV.1.1)

Type of procedure

IV.2)

Award criteria

IV.2.1)

Award criteria

IV.2.2)

An electronic auction has been used

IV.3)

Administrative information

IV.3.1)

File reference number attributed by the contracting authority

SSA 196

IV.3.2)

Previous publication(s) concerning the same contract

Other previous publications

Section V: Award of contract

Contract No:

 Lot Number: 

 Title: 

V.1)

Date of contract award decision:

V.2)

Numbers of offers received:

V.3)

Name and address of economic operator to whom the contract has been awarded

V.4)

Information on value of contract

V.5)

The contract is likely to be subcontracted

Short description of the value/proportion of the contract to be subcontracted

Section VI: Complementary Information

VI.1)

Contract related to a project and/or programme financed by community funds?

VI.2)

Additional Information

VI.3)

Procedures for appeal

VI.3.1)

Body responsible for appeal procedures

Body responsible for mediation procedures

VI.3.2)

Lodging of appeals

The Contracting Authority intends to enter into a contract following a minimum 10 day calendar standstill period following the publication of this notice. For further information, please Contact the general counsel at the email address provided within this notice.

VI.3.3)

Service from which information about the lodging of appeals may be obtained

VI.4)

Dispatch date of this Notice

Annex D1 – General procurement

Justification for the award of the contract without prior publication of a contract notice in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU)
Directive 2004/18/EC

a) No tenders or no appropriate tenders in response to:

	Open procedure
	Restricted procedure

b) The products involved are manufactured purely for the purpose of research, experiment, study or development under the conditions stated in the Directive (for supplies only).

c) The works/goods/services can be provided only by a particular tenderer for reasons that are:

	Technical
	Artistic
	Connected with the protection of exclusive rights

d) Extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable by the contracting authority and in accordance with the strict conditions stated in the Directive.

e) Additional works/deliveries/services are ordered under the strict conditions stated in the Directive.

f) New works/services, constituting a repetition of existing works/services and ordered in accordance with the strict conditions stated in the Directive.

g)Service contract awarded to the successful candidate or one of them after a design contest.

h) For supplies quoted and purchased on a commodity market.

i) For the purchase of supplies on particularly advantageous terms:

	from a supplier which is definitely winding up its business activities
	from the receivers or liquidators of a bankruptcy, an arrangement with creditors or a similar procedure.

j) All tenders submitted in reply to an open procedure, a restricted procedure or competitive dialogue were irregular or unacceptable. Only those tenderers were included in the negotiations which have satisfied the qualitative selection criteria.

Other justification for the award of the contract without prior publication of a contract notice in the OJEU:

k) The contract has as its object services listed in Annex B of Directive 2004/18/EC or in Annex XVII B of Directive 2004/17/EC

l) The contract falls outside the scope of application of the relevant directive.

In addition to the box(es) ticked above please explain in a clear and comprehensive manner why the award of the contract without prior publication of a contract notice in the OJEU is lawful, stating in any case the relevant facts, and, as appropriate, the conclusions of law in accordance with the articles in the relevant Directive (500 words maximum):

It is the view of the Crick that the acquisition of the system from waters as opposed any other instrument is justified for the following reasons:

The Waters UPC2 Xevo TQ-S micro system couples a superfluidics chromatography system with a triple quad mass spectrometer. The UPC2 superfluidics system allows for unrivalled separation of lipid classes, and even within classes. This is essential for the identification and elucidation of lipids (e.g. phospholipids), especially when stable isotope labelling experiments are performed (such labelling experiments account for 75 % of the work carried out in the metabolomics lab). The Xevo TQ-S micro ‘triple quad’ mass spectrometer represents a solid instrument that allows the reproducible, sensitive data acquisition required for this work. While other mass spectrometers with greater resolution and sensitivity are available (e.g. Time-of-flight instruments), the Xevo TQ-S micro is good value for money and provides the ‘MRM’ (multiple reaction monitoring) capabilities required for this in depth research.

Justification.

The Waters Xevo TQ-Su with Acquity UPC2 allows us to do chromatographic separation of a variety of important molecules (most notably lipids) in a way that no other system can offer. In particular, the chromatographic speed is approximately 4-5 times faster than ‘traditional’ liquid chromatography. For example, separation of lipid classes will take 25-40 minutes by LC-MS, whereas the Waters system will provide similar separation in only 6 minutes. Considering that around 40 % of the Metabolomics STP’s current workload (of 20 000 samples per year (and rising)) consists of lipid samples, the Waters system has the potential to save around 3 300 hours per year. There are no other comparible systems offering this level of efficiency.

In addition to this, the SFC system is able to be precisely ‘fine-tuned’ such that there is great potential to have ‘intra-class’ separation of lipids – a crucial capability for studying lipid molecules of very similar structures, and will also be of importance when performing the metabolic labelling experiments that are the speciality of this STP.

The Waters UPC2 combined with the Waters MS portfolio, is currently the only combination of instruments which is able to provide a proven track record for the above applications.