Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2016-05-11
Buyer: Ministry of Defence, Land Equipment, Armoured Vehicles Programmes — Artillery Systems Programme
Country: UK
Region: Bristol, City of
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Contract award without prior publication
CPV classification: 72231000: Development of software for military purposes
Estimated value:  GBP

Technical requirements: NATO Armaments Ballistic Kernel (NABK) S4 Application and Code Development and Support to UK Equipments.
Development of software for military applications. Development of software for military applications. This contract procures the development and maintenance of a suite of high integrity software projects and component products, considered fundamental capability for NATO and support for UK defence equipment programmes. The capabilities delivered include ballistic trajectory calculations, terrain data management and deconfliction, management and use of meteorological data, providing coordinate transforms and gross error checks on Fire mission data for a number of UK defence equipment programmes. These capabilities are delivered to the following projects: Operational METGM production at the UK Meteorological Office, Fire Control Battlefield Information System Application (FC BISA), Fire Control Application (FCA) and the Type 26 Global Combat Ship (GCS) Gun Fire Control Systems (GFCS). The following projects that may require these capabilities are Advanced Sound Ranging Programme (ASP), Type 45 Destroyer Gun Fire Control System (GFCS) and the Light Gun (105mm L118) and AS90 (115mm) weapon platforms.
It is considered that this requirement can be placed using the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a contract notice pursuant to Article 28(1)(e) of Directive 2009/81/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (Regulation 16(1)(a)(ii) of the Defence and Security Public Contract Regulations 2011). This is for technical reasons because only QinetiQ has the required knowledge, expertise, experience and skill to carry out the development and maintenance of this highly complex S4 software. The development and maintenance of the S4 software is highly complex and requires significant experience of using advanced Ada, Java and C++ programming languages and application development using .NET and .XML, as well as expertise in external ballistics. QinetiQ hold over 15 years experience of developing the S4 software and only QinetiQ has the required knowledge, expertise and skill to carry out the development and maintenance of this highly complex S4 software. QinetiQ also provide the lead NATO Independent Safety Auditor role for the S4 programme, who provides safety assurances for a variety of S4 Products within the NATO cooperative, and advice to a significant number of UK equipment projects. Any work carried out on the S4 programme by another party would result in the complete loss in critical technical and safety expertise, along with a disproportionate impact on time and cost to the UK MoD and the UK equipment projects utilising the S4 software.
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From 2.4.2014 the Government is introducing its new Government Security Classifications Policy (GSC) to replace the current Government Protective Marking Scheme. A key aspect of this is the reduction in the number of security classifications used. All suppliers to the Department are encouraged to make themselves aware of the changes as it may impact on this Requirement. The link below to the Gov.uk website provides information on the new GSC.
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.
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-201659-DCB-8181786.