Public procurement notice: Voluntary Ex Ante Transparency Notice
Published: 2018-03-31
Buyer: Ministry of Defence, ISTAR, Situational Awareness Command and Control (SACC) Delivery Team
Country: UK
Contract type: Supplies
Procedure: Negotiated without a prior call for competition
CPV classification: 75220000: Civil defence services
Estimated value: 1917000 GBP

Technical requirements: Situational awareness command and control delivery team, part of the UK Ministry of Defence, intends to award a contract to Ultra electronics Ltd. (the “Contractor) for the continued support of the Air defence system integrator (ADSI). The Contract will be for a period of 2 years plus two six month Options and have a value of approximately 2 300 000 GBP Inclusive of VAT.
It is considered that this requirement can be placed using the negotiated procedure without prior publication pursuant to Article 28(1)(e) of Directive 2009/81/EC (Regulation 16(1)(a)(ii) of the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011) for technical reasons.
Ultra electronics provides the Air defence systems integrator (ADSI), Advanced correlation and tracking system (ACTS) and TacView C2 software toolsets, also known as ‘ADSI modules’, and related ADSI-based capabilities to the Authority. The software, and related system designs, are proprietary to Ultra electronics and are delivered and supported directly by Ultra electronics business units in the UK and USA. The MOD did not fund the core element of the software and as such does not have rights of use in the underlying source code and associated source material needed to allow a third party to undertake the work. Consequently the contractor is the only economic operator that has supported and maintained the existing ADSI and is the only supplier with the required software, plus detailed knowledge and specific expertise in the existing system, to be able to satisfactorily repair, maintain or modify it.
To attempt to award the contract to another provider, without the overarching software and technical expertise, would result in disproportionate time and cost in training. Furthermore, the ADSI system is an Early entry capability that is stood to at a state of high readiness to deploy with only 120 hours’ notice. The ADSI is currently and for the foreseeable future on deployment, and requires the full level of support from the contractor on day 1 of the contract which affords no opportunity to ramp up the level of support.
The time frame required to make the ADSI available for the purposes of familiarisation to a new contractor would also result in unjustifiable logistical challenges and risk to users on system availability.
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-2018329-DCB-12140145.


Winner: Ultra Electronics
Award value: 1917000