CERN

1. Importance of the purchases

The European Organization for Nuclear Research based in Geneva since 1954 spends 1/3 of its annual budget on purchasing goods (supplies) and industrial services.
Its annual budget is about 1 billion swiss francs (FS).

The Walloon Trade Office has organized since 1997 five workshops giving the opportunity to belgian walloon companies of being known by the engineers , technicians and purchasing services of CERN.The last edition was made in cooperation with the other belgian regions.

The function of ILO , Industrial Liaison Officer , consists on one hand in giving CERN information about the companies which can meet with their production the technological requests of CERN and on the other hand in systematically informing the belgian walloon companies of business opportunities with this organization.

We thus invite the belgian walloon companies to let us know their interest to receive the tenders of the CERN(see CONTACT in the left window).
Our office is sending through e-mail the MS and DO (see below- purchasing procedure) to all walloon companies which ask for it.

2. Websites:

3. Purchasing procedure

In a concise way , the purchasing procedure followed by CERN is :

3.1 - For tenders of more than 200 000 FS :
a) establishment of a Market Survey (MS) which is in fact a call of interest to a hundred european companies (taken into consideration : criterium of certification ISO, minimum amount of turnover and/or number of employees),
b) selection by the CERN of 10 to 15 companies mainly on the basis of technical and technological criteriums ,
c) Sending the final specification (IT) to the selected companies (normally 10 to 15 companies).

3.2 - For tenders of less than 200 000 FS :
The CERN uses a price enquiry (DO) and send it to the european companies in the sector concerned.

4. Purchasing Policy

The CERN follows a purchasing policy taking into account the balance of the industrial return going to each member-country (proportion of purchases of each country in the total purchases of CERN in relation with the proportion of the annual contribution of each country in the total budget of CERN).

This parameter is determined separately for supplies and industrial services.

5. Well balanced Countries

The well balanced countries , thus reaching an industrial return above the target are :

5.1.Well balanced countries for equipment for 2010:
- Switzerland
- Czech Republic
- Finland
- France
- Italy
- Slovakia

5.2. Well balanced countries for industrial services for 2010 :
- Belgium, Bulgaria,Switzerland,,Denmark,,France,Netherlands,Poland,,Portugal 

6. Main purchasing fields and technical activities :

6.1 .Materials science

6.2. Mechanics

6.3. Vacuum and ultrahigh vacuum

6.4. Cryogenics

6.5. Heating , cooling and ventilation

6.6. Electrotechnics

6.7. Magnetic systems

6.8. High voltage equipments

6.9. High frequences and micro-waves

6.10. Plasmas

6.11. Electronics

6.12. Computing

6.13. Communications

6.14. Nuclear Instrumentation et particles detectors

6.15. Beam Accelerators

6.16. Geodesy et topography

6.17. Civil engineering

6.18. Safety et accident prevention