The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) has opened up contracting opportunities to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) across Britain to support the availability of Royal Navy warships and submarines.
Under the Marine Systems Transformation (MaST) programme, 39 companies are now able to bid for work under the new seven-year framework agreement worth up to £850m ($1.1bn).
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Suppliers will provide non-combat equipment aboard Royal Navy platforms. Currently, the government says that it covers 180,000 different items from propulsion systems to galley equipment.
MaST is a new contracting strategy for the Marine Systems Support (MSS) team. The new strategy is designed to derive support from a greater pool of suppliers that are free to reach out to the authority directly.
Maria Eagle, the Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, announced the plans during a visit to Somer’s Forge in Birmingham, a manufacturer of bespoke naval parts.
The list of SMEs eligibile to participate stretches across the country: the government emphasised that between a third and half of these companies are located outside the South of England, in the Midlands, North of England, and some in Wales and Scotland.
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By GlobalData“The spares and repairs that keep our warships submarines at sea are critical,” said Eagle, “and this agreement will ensure that more British small businesses – from Southampton to Aberdeen – will be at the heart of supporting the Royal Navy.”
What will change?
MaST has been in the works for some time. A Prior Information Notice was first issued on 6 October 2021, when the government invited companies to engage in the market engagement phase.
Prior to the new agreement, support came from either the equipment desk or by a class-based approach, leading the MoD favouring larger primes it had worked with in the past. These methods have long been criticised for their inability to leverage the leading innovation coming from SMEs.
Moreover, MSS only encompassed responsibility for items onboard Type-45 destroyers and the Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carrier. A number of existing contractual arrangements will come to an end while two new frigate classes come under the auspices of MSS: Type-26 and Type-31.
Two birds, one stone
The agreement serves to address two enduring problems: SME exclusion and fleet availability. Why has such an agreement not been considered earlier?
One factor is the enduring contractual arrangements laid down by the MSS until now. However, another factor may be that the MoD is already in the process of implementing an overhaul of its procurement processes that is yet to be completed.
The new Integrated Procurement Model, established in February 2024, will accelerate the delivery of kit and equipment to the armed forces – more than ever before, the CEO of the MoD procurement branch, Defence Equipment and Support, Andy Start, pointed out in May this year. The Model has very nearly reached initial operating capability, once the Systems Integration area of the programme is up and running in October.
Although MaST was first conceived prior to the Model, it now falls under the Core Delivery area under the Model umbrella. The UK Defence programme will be fully operational by 2025.
