Public procurement notice: Contract Award Notice
Published: 2020-02-04
Buyer: Ministry of Defence, Air Support, C17 Command Support and Airborne Equipment Project Team (CSAE PT)
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 39523000
Estimated value: 4000000 GBP
Award criteria: Lowest price

Technical requirements: Contract for the Provision of Airborne Equipment and Helicopter Underslung Load Equipment (HUSLE) equipment types. The parachute equipment required includes specific parachute packing spares for both Airborne Delivery Equipment (ADE) stores parachutes and Airborne Forces Equipment (AFE)
This is a contract for the procurement only of spares and capital items in order to maintain fleet availability for the Airborne Equipment and Helicopter Under Slung Load Equipment (HUSLE) equipment types, Airborne Delivery Equipment (ADE) stores parachutes and Airborne Forces Equipment (AFE) personnel parachutes.
IrvinGQ, formerly Airborne Systems Ltd, is the Design organisation (DO) for the Airborne Equipment and Helicopter Under Slung Load Equipment (HUSLE) equipment types and through extant and previous contracts is responsible for their associated Post design services (PDS), and the parachute packing and repair support services. The parachute equipment required includes specific parachute packing spares for both Airborne Delivery Equipment (ADE) stores parachutes and Airborne Forces Equipment (AFE) personnel parachutes. Without a contract placed for procurement of the items required, these capabilities would cease to be available to the UK Armed Forces, including National Standby capabilities.
Our intention is to place a one-off contract for the procurement only of spares and Capital items in order to maintain fleet availability until a longer term contract is in place.
Parachute packing is contracted to the Airborne Forces Parachute Servicing Unit (AFPSU) branch of IrvinGQ under the Parachute Equipment Support Contract (PESC) which was awarded through competition, and is a spares-exclusive contract. Before PESC, parachute packing was contracted to AFPSU in a spares-inclusive contract, where IrvinGQ (AFPSU) procured the parachute packing spares (such as cords and threads) for their own use. The same specific types of spares still need to be used for parachute packing in order to ensure that the physical configuration control of the parachute system is maintained as underwritten by the parachute Design organisation. IrvinGQ therefore have end-to-end knowledge of the design and usage of parachutes and are uniquely equipped to meet the requirement for this one-off purchase contract to provide more of the same parachute items that they have previously provided and currently use for parachuting packing.
The design and engineering drawings are subject to copyright, which vests in the contractor. The authority has not secured rights in this documentation, where it was delivered, to pass to a third party. This means that a third party could not replicate the equipment types with certainty, and the authority could not accurate specify the equipment types to advertise in a competition.
As the Design organisation (DO) only IrvinGQ has the expertise to complete this Statement of Requirement (SoR) and they are therefore the sole entity under technical grounds. For the specific parachute equipment to be procured under this contract, safety engineers within the C17CSAE DT, including the TAA, do not consider that the parachute performance characteristics pertaining to their safe operation could be derived from analysis of the equipment. MOD safety authorities would therefore not have sufficient confidence in the quality of advice that could be provided by anyone other than the original designer of the parachute system.
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-2020131-DCB-15910234


Winner: IrvinGQ
Award value: 4000000
Number of bids: 1