Tender

British Antarctic Survey seeks contractor for two laboratory refits

By Staff Writer  |  30-08-2026

UK Research and Innovation is seeking a main contractor to refurbish Laboratories 258 and 270 at the British Antarctic Survey. The tender notice, identifier 082210-2026, was published on the United Kingdom tender service at 14:13 on 28 August 2026. The estimated value is 382,500 pounds excluding value added tax, or 459,000 pounds including it.

Tenders close at 14:00 on 25 September 2026. Questions close ten days earlier, at 14:00 on 15 September 2026, and the buyer expects to award by 8 October 2026.

The delivery region is recorded as Cambridgeshire. The British Antarctic Survey gives its own address as High Cross, Madingley Road, Cambridge.

A five month programme with a fixed end

The contract period runs from 26 October 2026 to 31 March 2027, with a maximum extent recorded as 30 April 2027. The notice describes the extension in plain terms: additional time in case of undocumented issues found during refit.

That single sentence is the most useful thing in the notice for anyone pricing it. The buyer has said openly that it does not have a complete record of what is behind the walls and services of two working laboratories, and it has bought itself one month of contractual room against that risk rather than pretending the risk is not there. A bidder reading it should price the survey and the opening up work accordingly, and should expect the extension to be argued about on the facts rather than granted on request.

Fifty, forty and ten

Award criteria are published as technical and quality at 50 per cent, price at 40 per cent, and social value at 10 per cent. A 50 per cent quality weighting on a package of this size is high, and it is consistent with laboratory work, where the method of keeping adjacent research space operational usually matters more to the client than the tendered figure.

The requirement is classified as laboratory building construction work. It is procured as works, by open procedure, above threshold, under the Procurement Act 2023, and it is covered by the Government Procurement Agreement. The buyer has recorded the lot as suitable both for small and medium sized enterprises and for voluntary, community and social enterprises.

Open, and open early

An open procedure at 382,500 pounds means any qualifying contractor may bid without a pre-qualification stage, and the whole competition is compressed into the four weeks between publication and the closing date. Bidders have until 15 September to ask questions, which leaves ten days to absorb the answers before submission. On a refurbishment of live laboratory space, that question window is where the buildability of the phasing gets settled.

Interested contractors are directed to the buyer's own procurement portal, and the buyer's contact is the Natural Environment Research Council procurement team within UK Research and Innovation, at Polaris House, Swindon. The procurement reference is UKRI-6342.

The notice does not describe what the two laboratories are used for, what services they carry, or whether they will be handed over empty. Those are the questions the site visit and the question period exist to answer, and none of them should be assumed from the published scope, which runs to a single sentence.