Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2017-09-12
Buyer: Ministry of Defence, Land Equipment, Armoured Vehicles Programmes — Artillery Systems Programme
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 72231000: Development of software for military purposes | 72261000: Software support services
Estimated value: 2693480 GBP

Technical requirements: Support for Fire Control Battlefield Information System Application (FC BISA) and Fire Control Application (FCA) for Peacetime and Operational Usage.
Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), part of the UK Ministry of Defence, intends to place a Contract Amendment to the Basic Contractor Logistic Support (BCLS) Contract for FC BISA and FCA. 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 (Regulation 16(1)(a)(ii) of the Defence and Security Public Contract Regulations 2011). This is due to technical reasons.
FC BISA and FCA is a Command, Control, Communication, Computation Intelligence (C4i) system that generates firing data for artillery and mortars. The scope of the contract includes but is not limited to provision of BCLS, FC BISA and FCA software support, FCA repairs, e-Classroom maintenance and provision of ad-hoc tasking (including Post Design Services). The intended scope of the Contract Amendment includes uplift to the ad-hoc tasking, including PDS tasking, updates to FC BISA and e-Classrooms.
Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), part of the UK Ministry of Defence, intends to place a Contract Amendment to the Basic Contractor Logistic Support (BCLS) Contract for Fire Control Battlefield Information System Application (FC BISA) and Fire Control Application (FCA), ARTYSYS/00236.
The FC BISA and FCA system is a Command, Control, Communication, Computation Intelligence (C4i) system that generates the firing data for artillery and mortars. The scope of the contract includes but is not limited to: provision of a Contactor Logistic Service, delivery of FC BISA and FCA software support, FCA equipment repair, e-Classroom repairs, installation and maintenance and provision of support ad-hoc tasking (including Post Design Services tasking).
The intended scope of the Contract Amendment will include an uplift to the support ad-hoc tasking, including Post Design Services tasking for delivery of updates to FC BISA software and Training Infrastructure.
The Artillery Systems Team, part of UK Ministry of Defence (MoD), intends to place a Contract Amendment for the Software Support of the Fire Control Battlefield Information System Application (FC BISA) and Fire Control Application (FCA) with CGI IT UK Limited.
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 (Regulation 16(1)(a)(ii) of the Defence and Security Public Contract Regulations 2011). This is due to technical reasons.
The FC BISA software is a Safety Integrity Level 2 (SIL2) fully networked Command, Control, Communication, Computation and Intelligence (C4i) System designed, developed and previously supported by CGI over the previous 15 year period. FCA is the standalone variant on bespoke hardware. Only CGI has at its disposal the designs, knowledge, skill and expertise necessary to carry out the software support requirement for this particularly complex system and also ensure that the interoperability requirements between FC BISA and FCA are fully met. As the Design Authority, CGI also underwrites the system as a whole and the associated safety cases. Any work carried out to the systems by a third party would require a new safety case which, were it possible to achieve, would result in substantial future technical and safety difficulties and a disproportionate impact on time and expense in order to provide the MoD with the necessary assurances that the complex safety-related system had not been compromised.
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-201797-DCB-10973820.


Winner: CGI IT UK Limited
Award value: 2693480