Design, Development, Supply & Installation of Equipment for Studio Ulster

The Vision for Studio Ulster (SU) is to be a leading Commercial Centre of Excellence in Virtual Production (“VP”) in the UK and Ireland and to establish a ‘Tier 1’ Centre of Excellence in Research and Development and Innovation (R&D&I), in Real-time and Virtual Production, a rapidly developing suite of technologies and methodologies for screen content production. Located on the North Foreshore in Belfast, the development of SU in conjunction with the Belfast Harbour Film Studio complex creates a unique blend of facilities, that will drive commercial activity and collaboration in R&D on an unprecedented scale involving all strands of production and technology professionals involved in the virtual production, film, broadcast, animation, games, VFX and immersive sectors. The successful appointed tenderer will develop technical proposals for the equipment allowing SUL to deliver on the final Business Plan objectives. The design solutions presented shall be based on the successful tenderer's IP and best practices from experience to date in the VP sector. SU is a fully funded project, with Contracts for Funding executed and all associated legal agreements with Belfast Harbour in place. The project benefits from £25.2m (£21m excluding VAT) through BRCD, both contributions to support the initial development of the SU VP studio and to part-fund life cycle replacement costs for the specialist VP equipment, within the first 10 years of operation. Ulster University has committed £3.6million from its own funds and has secured a further £2.9m from the UK Levelling Up Fund. These sums represent the total scale of the SUL investment, inclusive of miscellaneous costs for items outside of this Competition (loose furniture, fees, marketing, branding etc.). The successful tenderer will develop the design, procure, deliver, install, test and commission the specialist equipment and provide all necessary training to SUL in the operation of the equipment.