Infrastructure Prototype Reference Stack for N-RICH Prototype

Tender description

Which phase the project is in Not started Existing team The Contract Manager (CM) is Rebecca Bailey, Programme Director, Towards a National Collection, Email: Rebecca.bailey@hes.scot David Flockhart, Procurement Business Partner, Historic Environment Scotland, Email: david.flockhart@hes.scot Address where the work will be done Mostly remote working, no HES office attendance required. Some in person events as detailed in the attached specification. Working arrangements The attached specification document has information on what in person events will be required and arrangements for related T&S. Provide more information about your security requirements: No security clearance needed Provide more information about your security requirements: No specific security clearance required. Latest start date 2026-08-10 Enter the expected contract length: 7 months and 15 days Are you prepared to show your budget details?: Yes Indicative maximum: 790000 Provide further information: The costs of the Infrastructure Prototype Reference Stack are to be no greater than £790,000 (inclusive of VAT). Tenderers should specify their fees and costs as per the information required in the pricing schedule. A minimum of £40,000 (inclusive of VAT) must be reserved for payment to UK-based public sector cultural heritage collection partners. Costs must include provision for in-person attendance by: • The full team at a start-up meeting; and • A selection of the team at up to three collaborative in-person sessions with project partners and stakeholders, subject to confirmation of feasibility and timing by the TaNC team. Access to EPCC/EIDF infrastructure is provided separately by AHRC and must not be costed within this tender. Any submission with a cost exceeding £790,000 (inclusive of VAT) will be marked as a non-compliant tender and will not be scored. Rates and prices shall be deemed inclusive of all additional expenses howsoever incurred. Confirm if you require a contracted out service or supply of resource Contracted out service: the off-payroll rules do not apply Summary of work Please note full details of the requirement can be found in the attached documentation. The Infrastructure Prototype Reference Stack (hereafter ‘Reference Stack’) is one of the two core technical work packages delivered through the N-RICH Prototype, alongside the Digitisation Capability Pilot (delivery planned for May-November 2026). Where the Digitisation Capability Pilot addresses the supply-side challenge of producing computation-ready collections data, the Reference Stack addresses the demand-side challenge: whether researchers can realistically access, combine, analyse and reuse cultural heritage data at scale through shared computational services, interoperable interfaces and governed research environments. The Reference Stack does not seek to deliver a production platform. It is a time-limited prototype intervention designed to test architectural, governance and cost assumptions before any large-scale capital investment in a National Research Infrastructure (NRI). The emphasis is on producing durable reference architectures, patterns, governance models and quantified evidence that can inform a future AHRC business case. Where the supplied staff will work No specific location (for example they can work remotely) Why the work is being done Please note full details can be found in the attached documentation. The National Research Infrastructure for Cultural Heritage (N-RICH) Prototype is a two-year investment in the UK’s world-renowned cultural heritage collections, funded through a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) Infrastructure Fund Preliminary Activity grant awarded to the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and delivered by Towards a National Collection (TaNC) in collaboration with AHRC. The N-RICH Prototype aims to de-risk and test the key elements of a digital research infrastructure for cultural heritage in the UK. Core activities will include a Digitisation Capability Pilot, an Infrastructure Prototype, and three cross-cutting Research Frameworks on Environment & Sustainability, Ethics, and Cybersecurity. The N-RICH Prototype’s demonstration of a joined-up approach between standards and process-based frameworks, real-world digital infrastructure development and digitisation capability will provide a critical evidence base for the business case for full investment in a National Research Infrastructure for UK Cultural Heritage. Towards a National Collection started with an £18.9 million UK-wide research and development programme, funded through UKRI’s Strategic Priorities Fund and delivered by the AHRC. This five-year initiative concluded in March 2025 and has laid the essential groundwork for the N-RICH Prototype. Through a mix of funding calls and commissioned research, TaNC investigated the technical, process and content barriers and opportunities of the use of the UK’s digital cultural heritage assets for research and innovation. The business problem you need to solve Please note full details are contained in the attached documentation. The objectives of the Reference Stack are to: • Define a federated reference architecture for cultural collections research infrastructure, including data access, semantic services, compute and governance layers. • Test API and interoperability patterns that allow institutions to expose data without centralising ownership. • Explore semantic, graph and entity services required for cross-collection analysis. • Assess AI-readiness of cultural data interfaces without committing to specific tools or vendors. • Prototype governed research environments aligned with Trusted Research Environment (TRE) principles. • Define and prioritise a small number of representative cultural heritage research use cases to structure prototype design and testing. • Consider interoperability and alignment with existing AHRC and UKRI-funded research infrastructures. • Generate quantified evidence on compute and storage • Generate quantified evidence on security and sustainability implications, that builds on the separately commissioned Environmental & Sustainability Framework and the Cybersecurity Framework. • Develop governance, access control and audit models suitable for distributed infrastructure. • Publish openly licensed architecture documentation and associated guidance. • Propose a lightweight stewardship and evolution model for future development • Test the relationship between data scale, semantic integration quality and research value, including identification of minimum viable corpus sizes and points at which economies of scale emerge. First user type: Full details can be found in the attached documentation.