Official UK procurement notice
Provision of Remote Agile Application Development Services
Authority: CERN
What is being bought
Published requirement descriptionCERN intends to place several contracts for the provision of remote agile application development services. The Services currently support a contractor workforce of approximately one hundred professionals across a variety of technical and functional profiles.
The Services shall include: software design and development, application maintenance and support, systems integration, quality assurance and testing, user experience and business analysis, deployment and operational support activities, user support, technical consultancy related to software engineering and application architecture.
The present Market Survey will be followed by the issue of an Invitation to Tender to qualified and selected Firms and Group of Firms in August 2026 for contracts to start in Q1 2027 for a duration of five years. The future Invitation to Tender will be adjudicated on a best-value-for-money basis.
To request the technical specification and market survey documents, please contact Sara Fletcher (Sara.fletcher@stfc.ukri.org) of the Science, Technology and Facilities Council (STFC).
STFC are acting as UK liasions for the purchasing organisation, CERN.
CPV: IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support
The lotProcurement structure
single lot · no lot value publishedLot #1The Services will primarily be delivered using CERN-provided infrastructure,…Planned
The Services will primarily be delivered using CERN-provided infrastructure, platforms, tools and services. Depending on the nature of the work, the Contractor's personnel may be provided with CERN-managed accounts, repositories, development environments, collaboration tools, software licences and hosting platforms. The technical environment primarily consists of web applications and services based on modern software engineering technologies and practices, including:
- web applications based on Java technologies, mainly using the Spring framework;
- React and TypeScript-based front-end applications;
- Python-based data engineering, workflow orchestration and scheduling using Apache Airflow;
- Oracle databases;
- GitLab for CI/CD automation;
- Docker, Kubernetes, Helm and ArgoCD for containerised infrastructure and deployment automation;
- Sentry, Prometheus and Grafana for monitoring and observability;
- Microsoft Power BI for reporting and data visualisation.
While the majority of the Services are expected to be delivered within the technical environment described above, CERN also maintains and evolves a number of complementary applications, platforms and services using other technologies. Contractors may therefore be required to provide expertise in additional technologies, including Windows architecture expertise, Python, Go, C#, Flask, or Vue.js. Additional information: This procurement/requirement is wholly owned by CERN, with STFC seeking to signpost the opportunity to UK based suppliers.
UK HMG retains no involvement, oversight or engagement in the procurement, and are acting to signpost to CERN/STFC from FTS and/or other centralised digital platforms only.
UK HMG has no further information to share and will not respond to any further questions or engagements relating to the potential procurement.
In all instances, Sara Fletcher (sara.fletcher@stfc.ac.uk) should be contacted for further detail.
Pipeline intelligence · planning stage: how this market runs before the tender is published
How CERN buys IT services: consulting, software, internet (CPV 72), and who usually turns up
CERN has little published record in this market. Frameworks and DPS are left out: they draw different bid counts. Whole-market view: IT services: consulting, software, internet (CPV 72) →
How the contest usually goes
Winner shares use published awards; bid and price charts use contested lots.
i
How often small and medium firms win.
Share of awards where the winner’s size is known.
The counts under this question show how many awards have a known supplier size.
Across this market, small firms won 37% of awards with a known supplier size.
i
How often local firms win similar work.
Winners with a registered address in the delivery region, out of awards with a known address.
Local means the winner is registered in the region where that award was delivered.
A local branch does not count if the registered address is elsewhere.
Across this market, 36% of winners were registered in the delivery region.
i
How long buyers here take to decide after bids close.
Middle value in days from the bid deadline to the award date, on competitions that published both.
Only decided tenders count, so slow ones still waiting are not in.
Half of these awards have an award date within 50 days of the bid deadline.
i
How often work is awarded with no recorded rival.
Direct awards and tenders where every published lot count shows one bid.
The market share is a minimum: some awards have no bid count.
Thin markets produce this too; it is not proof of a tailored specification.
Across this market, at least 63% of awarded procurements had no recorded rival.
How many bids did past lots attract?
i
How many bids past lots received.
Each colour is a bid-count range. Only competed lots with a published count are included.
Past bids do not predict this tender.
1 bid12%
2–328%
4–628%
7+32%
How did awards compare with estimates?
i
Where winning prices landed against estimates.
Each colour shows awards below, close to or above the published estimate, one lot at a time.
Past prices are a guide, not a bid price.
Below estimate46%
Within ±2%38%
Above estimate16%
Assess each lot i
What past awards tell you about each lot.
See the forecast, this buyer’s earlier suppliers and firms with relevant wins.
No supplier is confirmed as a bidder.
i
What past awards tell you about each lot.
See the forecast, this buyer’s earlier suppliers and firms with relevant wins.
No supplier is confirmed as a bidder.
Open a lot for its forecast, this buyer’s previous supplier and possible competitors, from published award history, not a bid list
Lot #1The Services will primarily be delivered using CERN-provided infrastructure,…CPV 72Published estimate£10m
This lot lists more than one class in CPV 72. The comparison uses that group.
i
How many bids this lot may attract.
The forecast uses similar past competitions. The bar shows either that forecast or past bid counts; the line below says which.
Each lot shows its own forecast based on its own category; forecasts for different lots of the same notice are not comparative. The bar shows 789 past lots.
A forecast, not a list of bidders.
1 bid12%
2–328%
4–628%
7+32%
i
Where the award price may land.
The forecast uses similar awards and the buyer’s estimate. The band covers the middle half of likely prices.
No comparable awards for this lot yet.
A statistical guide from past awards, not a price to bid.
Who has supplied this buyer on similar work? i
Who has done similar work for this buyer.
Past contracts are matched by buyer, title and type of work.
A past supplier may not bid again.
i
Who has done similar work for this buyer.
Past contracts are matched by buyer, title and type of work.
A past supplier may not bid again.
No earlier contract of this buyer matches this lot on the published record.
Who could compete for this lot? i
Who could compete for this lot?
Firms with relevant past wins. On a framework, we show firms on that agreement.
None is confirmed as a bidder.
i
Who could compete for this lot?
Firms with relevant past wins. On a framework, we show firms on that agreement.
None is confirmed as a bidder.
Candidate suppliers for this notice have not been worked out yet, so this is not a verdict that nobody fits.
About this data
- Source. Official UK public procurement notices (Find a Tender), reused under the Open Government Licence v3.0. New notices arrive through the day; the figures are rebuilt nightly.
- Two views, kept apart. The authority’s own track record and the wider market for the same kind of work sit side by side and are never mixed. Where the local picture is too thin, a figure widens to a broader market and says which one it used.
- Forecasts are labelled. The price forecast and its range, possible competitors and the earlier-work matches are our estimates from past awards: not published facts, not win chances and not price advice. Official notices do not say who is bidding.
- Every figure shows what it rests on. Not every notice publishes a bid count, a value or a delivery region, so each figure carries the number of records behind it, and one built on few records is marked as such. The on a figure explains it; the counting rules are in the methodology. Spotted something wrong? Tell us.
Procedure terms & legal framework
From the official record · publisher note attached- Legal basis
- CELEX · 32014L0024 Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (Directive 2014/24/EU)
- Procurement category
- Services
- Notice status
- Planned procurement
- Procurement threshold
- Unspecified in notice
- Regulatory regime
- Standard
- Commercial structure
- Stand-alone contract (no framework)
- Competition type
- Competitive procedure
- GPA / WTO covered
- Yes (GPA)
- Recurring procurement
- Unspecified in notice
- First published
- 7 Jul 2026, 07:51 BST
- Last source update
- 7 Jul 2026, 07:51 BST
- Authority reference
MS-5187/FAP/LT- FTS notice number
2026/S 000-063398- Classification (CPV)
- Delivery area
- Official registry OCID
ocds-h6vhtk-06c4b4Find a Tender
Publisher note: This procurement is wholly owned by CERN, with STFC seeking to signpost the requirements to UK based suppliers. UK HMG retains no involvement, oversight or engagement in the procurement, and are acting to signpost to CERN/STFC from FTS and/or other centralised digital platforms only.
How it was run
Official notice- Submission deadline
- —
Timeline
7 Jul 2026 → 1 Dec 2026 · 2 dates- Notice published111 days ago7 Jul 2026, 07:51 BST
- Today27 Oct 2026
- Tender notice expectedin 34 days1 Dec 2026
Commercial outcome & contract awards
Pipeline notice- Awards (0)
- No award published
- Contracts (0)
- No contract published
- Bid statistics
- No aggregate bid statistics published
Contracting authority & participating public bodies
Official documents & specifications
Official links; attachments are not copiedNo document links were published on the notice.