Contract; University of Turku, a M-Class and Prep 150 system

University of Turku planned to purchase a new HPLC instrument. Justification for direct purchase of an M-Class and Prep 150 system as well as upgrades to our existing Waters Premier systems where earlier published officially. The combination of these systems provided in one package, provided by Waters, was the only set of instruments in the market that meet all the specific and necessary technical requirements to fulfil the uncompromising needs of the acquiring department as follows:

• The new nanoflow HPLC system needs to be directly controllable through Sciex OS operating system so that it can be used with our existing mass spectrometers (namely the Sciex 8600). Direct control through the vendor (Sciex) is needed to prevent communication issues and smooth operation.
• The planned purchase also includes the acquisition of sample organizes and a column manager that must be able to work with our existing Waters Premier UHPLC systems in order to increase sample capacity and method flexibility.
• The planned purchase must also upgrade our existing robots to allow for 12 channel pipetting rather than the current 8 channel. The new pipette must be compatible with the Waters Andrew+ system.
• The new instrument bundle must also provide the capacity to perform preparative LC and be able to upgrade our existing software licenses rather than purchasing a full new license for the device operation to ensure smooth method transfer. The current system in the lab is running on Empower and hence the new system must be able to upgrade from an older Empower license.
• The nanoflow system must be able to do both nanoflow and microflow on the same device capable of delivering flow rates between 200 nL/min to 100 uL/min. According to the Act on Public Procurement and Concession Contracts (1397/2016) section 40 when only a certain supplier can implement the procurement for a technical reason, provided also that there are no reasonable alternatives or substitute solutions, and that the absence of competition is not due to an artificial narrowing of the terms and conditions of the procurement, the contract may be awarded only to a particular supplier, Contracting authorities may award public contracts by a direct award. Prior to making decision the Contracting authority has inspected the relevant markets and available products and after careful consideration found its' conclusion grounded. Prior to entering into a contract Direct award preannouncement was published.