Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2019-07-22
Buyer: Ministry of Defence, Agencies/Misc, Other
Country: UK
Contract type: Services
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 80300000
Estimated value: 550000 GBP

Technical requirements: The MoD, Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) has unique requirements for its naval architects to deliver safe and effective warships and submarines on behalf of the Royal Navy, and requires an accredited MSC and submarine design course. Warships are different to other shipping in that they are more complex in terms of their military capabilities, their systems and the levels of integration.
MOD’s Naval Architects deliver safe and effective ships and submarines to the RN. MOD is placing a 24-month ctt with UCL to provide an MSc course in Naval Architecture in 2019/2020 for 7 students and Submarine Design Course for 10. MSc courses are RINA and IMarEST accredited. MOD’s requirements for NavArchs are unique, not met by
 standard commercial courses in UK/EU. Only UCL offers Submarine Design Course. Warships are complex military  assets. The ship/sub design element, uses a legacy database, a valuable resource for the course. The MoD/Ind/ UCL db cannot be passed to another provider. MOD embeds eng staff to manage and deliver courses to maintain accreditation (1 Professor of NavArch, 1 Senior Lecturer, 2 Research Assistants). MOD may compete future provision of this service; an RFI was issued in Feb19 to find other providers, and to obtain market knowledge to potentially reshape
training. The 2-4 year interim ctt period allows for possible competing and lead time for a new provider to
 develop and advertise new courses.
Under PCR 2015 Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) this is a contract for the provision of higher education services, which is single source for technical reasons as stated below;
Subject to the authority’s continuing requirement for this service, the strategy is competition as soon as practicable however time is required to run a competition, place a new contract and transition to a new provider and/or new construct for the course. This is estimated to be 2/4 academic years. Running a competition prior to a review of the Authority’s training needs would create an intolerable gap in training, since this would impact the SQEP of the organisation and its ability to discharge its safety obligation, for the following reasons: the role of the Naval Architect in DE&S is:
— understanding the impact of change on a vessel — ensuring key certification areas e.g. stability, evacuation, structures, manoeuvring and propulsion are not impacted,
Naval Architects undertaking this role need to be SQEP (Suitably Qualified and Experienced Personnel). The Qualified element is delivered by the UCL Naval Architecture course, experience is gained in various posts applying the knowledge accrued from the course. A gap in training would impact the SQEP in the organisation and would prejudice its ability to deliver the key roles identified above. This would have a direct impact on assuring safety and ensuring Naval Capability for the Royal Navy. The only viable way of ensuring this gap does not occur is to place a single source contract with UCL.
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-2019717-DCB-15110693


Winner: University College London
Award value: 550000