SCM forcing and initial conditions from ERA5

I've been trying to follow the instructions on this page:

How to extract Single Column Model forcing data from ECMWF analysis

to get SCM forcing and initial conditions from ERA5. I have a colleague who has been able to do this by changing the pull script (sms-updated/include_cray/getini1c_setup_cycle_validation_SCM_FC_cray, line 209) from /home/rd/nag/bin/getini1c_TCo1279_geostr to getini1c_lowres, as well as setting a number of ERA5-specific parameters. However, according to them, that function requires access to the libatlas libraries, so I would need to be in the 'rd' group as well as the 'ifs' group.

I have several questions/concerns related to this:

1) The default scripts provided on that page don't run for me at all, hitting a "failure to load file (null)" error. Another colleague pointed out that cray/getmars_scm.sms may need an additional line module load sms. I'd have to do a fresh download and try them again to really track the errors on that, but I wanted to get these questions out there first.

2) What are the various getini1c scripts available? Which product does each correspond to? (That directory is not public, so I can't just look myself.)

3) What are the libatlas scripts? Do I absolutely need 'rd' group access to work with ERA5, or are there alternatives?

Cheers, Jareth