Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2020-11-23
Buyer: Ministry of Defence, Air Support, Flight Simulation and Synthetic Trainers Project Team (FSAST PT)
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 80510000
Estimated value: 9000000 GBP

Technical requirements: High G Human Centrifuge Training and Test Capability — Interim solution, service provision and equipment maintenance.
This notice is not a request for expressions of interest so please do not apply to be invited to tender. This notice advises that the authority has decided to negotiate a contract with the named supplier on a single source basis, and is published for reasons of transparency.
The Flight Simulation and Synthetic Trainers Team, part of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (‘the Authority’) intends to place a new contract with Thales UK Ltd (‘Thales’) for the continued service provision and equipment maintenance of the High G Centrifuge in Cranwell together with the continued development of the training and test programme and safety case. The current contract has been in place for nearly 2 years and is due to expire in September 2021. However, the Authority intends to place the new contract with Thales for a period of 3 years with with an option to extend for a further 12 months upon expiry of the current contract. The value of this new contract is estimated to be approximately GBP 7-9 million. It is considered that this contract can be entered into by the Authority without the prior publication of a contract notice pursuant to Article 28(1)(e) of Directive 2009/81/EC and Regulation 16(1)(a)(ii) of the Defence and Security Public Contract Regulations 2011 (SI 2011/No 1848) on the basis that no economic operator aside from Thales UK is capable of meeting the Authority's requirements for technical reasons. For reasons unforeseeable by both the Authority and Thales the development of the safety case and training programme will not be at a sufficient level of maturity to enable the on-going requirement to be competed upon expiry of the current contract due to the lack of robust data which it is envisaged will be available on expiry of the current contract. Furthermore, there is only one company (Thales UK), who can provide the on-going services as they are the only ones who have the know-how and expertise to provide the continuing services. To hand the continuing development of the safety case and training programme to another provider would for interchangeability and interoperability reasons be strictly impractical as a new provider would have to repeat the vast majority of the work already done. This would cause delay, significant inconvenience and substantial duplication of costs for the Authority. In addition, to provide incomplete or immature data merely for the purposes of a competition, before it is at a sufficient stage of maturity risks endangering life. The Authority intends competing the on-going requirement as soon as it is practicable for it to do so.
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


Winner: Thales UK Ltd
Award value: 9000000