Four companies – Antec/Tecnalia Consortium, Elytt Energy, Sigmaphi and Tesla Engineering – were awarded a contract for QUACO PCP in November 2016, and they immediately started to develop their designs for the HL-LHC first-of-a-kind quadrupole magnets. In the middle of February the Buyers Group had individual mid-phase meetings with all the companies to review the progress of the work and at the end of Phase 1 on March 15 the companies submitted their end deliverables.

The evaluation of Phase 1 results took place in March and April. The companies successfully completing this phase were invited to submit their tenders for Phase 2 – Engineering design – on May 12. The deadline to submit the tenders is June 1 2017, and the winners will be announced on July 3.