UK SBS BLOJEU-CR17077INN - Advanced Materials Landscape

Advanced materials can be defined as: Materials designed for targeted properties and includes both completely new materials and those that are developments on traditional materials. Such materials show novel or improved structural and/or functional properties.

(https://connect.innovateuk.org/documents/26203578/0/High-...) Practically, at Innovate UK we recognise that all cutting edge material research could be considered advanced materials. This includes innovation in: metals, polymers, composites, coatings, nanomaterials/2D/graphene, glass, ceramics and electronic and functional materials.

Innovate UK is organised into four sector teams. Each of these teams focuses on a specific set of industrial areas.

Advanced materials industries are supported under the Manufacturing and materials directorate. The Directorate had a budget of £137m focused on supporting both advanced material and manufacturing businesses.

The Directorate also fund the 7 High Value Manufacturing Catapults across the UK that support cutting edge innovation in manufacturing. With a small team of 5, the advanced materials team are tasked with supporting a diverse range of industries.

Historically, our focus to date has been to target competitions on specific topic areas. However, with publication of the Industrial Strategy Green Paper and the announcement of the £4.9bn Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund we have an opportunity to develop larger programmes targeting materials sectors.

We want understand the size, shape and capabilities of the whole advanced materials sector and individual advanced materials industries within it: including their supply chain and their customers in the UK, as well as their growth rates. This is so that the Advanced materials teams in Innovate UK and central BEIS can better target government innovation support and investment to help this sector grow.

We hope that a better understanding of the sector will help us retain research, development and innovation in the UK, for example by making it easier for those engaged with innovation projects to find UK manufacturers for the new products they develop. DO NOT APPLY DIRECTLY TO BUYER All submissions will be assessed in accordance with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, for procurement values that exceed Regulation 5 (Threshold amounts) Responses must be received by the date in the bid documents.

Responses received outside or concurrently using the eSourcing process will not be accepted or considered further for this opportunity. Please disregard any content in this notice that requests your organisation "to apply directly to the buyer" as this unfortunately a system generated error, that is outside of the Contracting Authorities control The final date and time for the submission of bids is day / date / month / year at 11:00 DO NOT apply directly to the buyer.

Additional information: The final date and time for the submission of bids is 24/08/2017 at 14:00 How to Apply As part of the strategic alliance between UK Shared Business Services Ltd (UK SBS) and Crown Commercial Service (CCS), UK SBS will be using the CCS eSourcing Suite for this procurement. To register on the CCS eSourcing portal please follow the details contained within the Additional Information section of this notice.

Please disregard any content in this notice that requests your organisation "to apply directly to the buyer" as this unfortunately a system generated error, that is outside of the Contracting Authorities control DO NOT APPLY DIRECTLY TO BUYER All submissions will be assessed in accordance with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015, for procurement values that exceed Regulation 5 (Threshold amounts) Responses must be received by the date in the bid documents. Responses received outside or concurrently using the eSourcing process will not be accepted or considered further for this opportunity.

How to Register on the CCS eSourcing Suite Full details of this opportunity can be found on the e-sourcing portal please follow instructions below. If you have not yet registered on the eSourcing Suite, this can be done online at https://gpsesourcing.cabinetoffice.gov.uk by following the link 'Register for CCS eSourcing'.

Please note that, to register, you must have a valid DUNS number (as provided by Dun and Bradstreet) for the organisation which you are registering, who will be entering into a contract if invited to do so. Once you have registered on the eSourcing Suite, a registered user can express an interest for a specific procurement.

This is done by emailing expressionofinterest@crowncommercial.gov.uk. Your email must clearly state: • name and reference for the procurement you wish to register for; • name of the registered Bidder; • name and contact details for the registered individual sending the email.

Crown Commercial Service will process the email and then enable the Bidder to access the procurement online via the e-Sourcing Suite. The registered user will receive a notification email to alert them once this has been done.

The Sourcing documents can then be accessed on the eSourcing Suite at: : https://gpsesourcing.cabinetoffice.gov.uk using the instructions detailed in the Specification documents within Contracts Finder. As a user of the e-Sourcing Suite you will have access to Emptoris email messaging service which facilitates all messag