Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2017-12-21
Buyer: Ministry of Defence, Air Support, Air Platform Systems Project Team (APS PT)
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 35720000: Intelligence and surveillance systems
Estimated value: 191700 GBP

Technical requirements: The requirement is to continue support of GIES so that the equipment can continue to be used to support Operations and Flying training.
The GIES was originally designed to exploit imagery from the Digital Joint Reconnaissance Pod (DJRP). However, the DJRP was withdrawn from Service under SDR (2010) and since this time the GIES has been used to exploit imagery from the LIII pod. GIES converts LIII imagery downloaded on the Litening Recorder Tool (LRT) to UK STANAG profiles to allow rapid exploitation and dissemination of products and is employed by 1 ISR Wing to generate formatted, geo-referenced imagery from LIII on Tornado and Typhoon. This capability is required to support imagery analysis, to meet Intelligence Requirements and provide accurate initial Battle Damage Assessment. GIES was originally intended to go out of service in 2015 to align with the ending of Op Herrick. However, with the UK government’s commitment to Op Shader (until 2018) there is a requirement to extend the use of GIES to provide support for this operation.
It is intended that 2 options will be added into the Contract when awarded, these options will be for extension of the Contract for up to 2 years.
The Air Platform Systems (APS) team, part of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (the “Authority”), intends to place a one year contract, including two one year options to extend the Contract, with Thales UK Limited (the “Company”) for continued in-service support of the Ground Imagery Exploitation System (“GIES”)(the “Contract”).
It is considered that the Contract 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 and Regulation 16(1)(a)(ii) of the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011 (SI 2011/nº 1848) on the basis that the Contract may be awarded only to the company for technical reasons.
The company, which is currently providing in-service support in relation to the GIES to the Authority under Contract No. APSCM3/0001 entered into on 1.12.2015, is the original equipment manufacturer and design authority of the GIES and alone has access to the know-how, technical data, detailed design documentation and interface control documentation relating to the GIES and alone possesses the technical expertise required to provide the services under the Contract. Accordingly, no other economic operator would be able to test and analyse, and rectify, faults in, and perform other in-service support activities in relation to, the GIES. The Authority has no licence under the current contract or otherwise to use and exploit and/or sublicense a third party’s use and exploitation of any of such background know-how, data and documentation for the purposes of supplying services under a replacement contract.
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 Limited
Award value: 191700