Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2019-04-16
Buyer: Ministry of Defence, Land Equipment, Vehicle Support Team
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 35421100
Estimated value: 4500000 GBP

Technical requirements: The vehicle support team – operations, part of the Ministry of Defence, intends to place a 1-year supply contract with Thales UK (“the Contractor”) for the Procurement of the following Foxhound items, at an estimated total value of up to 4 500 000 GBP:
It is considered that this contract can be placed using the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a Contract Notice, pursuant to Articles 28(1)(e) of Directive 2009/81/EC (Regulations 16(1)(a)(ii) of the UK Defence and Security Public Contract Regulations 2011 respectively) for technical reasons. The procurement of replacement of the items above from another contractor would result in the ALARP status of the Foxhound fleet being compromised. The above items form part of the navigational Local Situational Awareness (LSA) system and if not built to the approved build standard/specification would cause operational and maintenance issues with the potential for loss of visibility for the Users of the vehicle causing potential miss-control of the platforms due to failure or tolerance issues.
Only the contractor, as the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) for the Foxhound LSA system, has access to the design and technical information, expertise, knowledge and know-how necessary to provide the required goods for the Foxhound items listed above. A third party would not be able to carry out this work without access to the necessary design and technical information which is required to produce the goods to the correct technical specification, in terms of quality, performance and safety tolerances. The LSA items being procured under this contract have been deemed to be safety critical to the operation of the platform and must be produced to the correct specification, held only by Thales. This information is not available to the Authority as it is owned by the Contractor in their role as the OEM and the Authority does not have the necessary rights to that information to provide to any third party.
The Authority reserves the right to amend any condition related to security of information to reflect any changes in national law or government policy. If any contract documents are accompanied by instructions on safeguarding classified information (e.g. a security aspects letter), the Authority reserves the right to amend the terms of these instructions to reflect any changes in national law or government policy, whether in respect of the applicable protective marking scheme, specific protective markings given, the aspects to which any protective marking applies, or otherwise. The link below to the Gov.uk website provides information on the Government Security Classification.
Advertising Regime OJEU: this contract opportunity is published in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU), the MoD Defence Contracts Bulletin and www.contracts.mod.uk GO Reference: GO-2019412-DCB-14795804


Winner: Thales UK Ltd
Award value: 4500000