Finland’s VTT publishes tender for pre-commercial U-space system

Finland’s VTT has published a tender for the supply of a pre-commercial U-space system. Deadline is 24 August, 2024.

According to the tender document:

“The object of the tender process is to award a single contract to a supplier that can provide the licenses for a precommercial U-Space system application and hosting in cloud environment (SaaS) (later also “Service”). VTT aims to purchase 25 simultaneous per-user licenses with an option to purchase perpetual and/or additional licenses in the future. All operators of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) in the U-Space airspace are required to purchase the following services:

• UAS flight authorization service,
• Geo-awareness service, – Network identification service,
• and – Traffic information service, according to REGULATION (EU) 2021/664 of 22 April 2021 on a regulatory framework for the U-space.

“In addition to these mandatory services, VTT wants to purchase a weather information service.

“The aforementioned services (the UAS flight authorization service, the geo-awareness service, the network ID service, the traffic information service and the weather information service) must be available anywhere in Finland.

“The procurement includes fifteen (15) trackers and there has to be an option to purchase more trackers later if needed. VTT uses drones for research purposes. The services offered in the tender must be compliant with EU Regulation, particularly with the Regulations regarding aviation safety (2023/203), requirements for manned aviation operating in U-space airspace (2021/666), requirements for providers of ATM/ANS and other air traffic management network functions (2021/665), regulatory framework for the U-Space (2021/664), The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA)’s acceptable means of compliance (AMC) and guidance material (GM) for 2021/664 and the GDPR 2016/679 (General Data Protection Regulation). VTT is not committed to buy any quantity of the services. The contract shall not include exclusive rights to supply the service described in the invitation to tender. VTT reserves the right to select the tenderer with the second highest points as a secondary supplier depending on the available RRF Funding and tender costs.”

Estimated value of the procurement is EUR200,000-300,000 (VAT 0).