What is Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP)?
PCP is a phased approach for purchasing R&D services by procurers for the development of innovative products, services or processes by enterprises/research centres that are not yet available on the market. The overall goal is:
- to solve socio-economic challenges
- to improve the performance, functionality of public services
One of the biggest advantages of PCP is the sharing of both opportunities and risks by both the public buyers and the private suppliers. It allows public purchasers to get innovative solutions to satisfy challenging needs, and support enterprises in their R&D.
The challenges and PCP approach used in Quaco
To extend its discovery potential, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will need a major upgrade in the 2020s to increase its luminosity. The integrated luminosity goal is a 10-fold increase of the nominal design value. As a highly complex and optimized machine, such an upgrade must be carefully studied. The necessary developments will require many years of prototyping, testing and implementing.
The new configuration of the machine, HL LHC, among other things, will be based on a new generation of magnets in the two high-luminosity interaction regions, aiming to provide a stronger beam focusing. All of these magnets constitute a significant technical challenge at the edge and beyond the actual state-of-the-art technology.
This Pre-Commercial procurement focuses on the realization of R&D services to develop MQYY superconducting quadrupole magnets that could be used in the Q4 Cryo assembly on the HL-LHC project. The MQYY could be part of the Insertion Region (IR) magnets delivering the beams to the CMS and ATLAS experiments.
Combining strengths and expertise from various countries and sectors, Quaco provides financial support to companies and researchers. For this it uses pre-commercial procurement, a unique and novel procurement method.