Project BRACIS

The Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear delivery team (CBRN DT)— part of the Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) organisation within the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) – seek to place a contract amendment to an existing contract with Bruhn Newtech Ltd (BNT) for the supply of BRACIS warning and reporting software for a period of 3 years to FY26 with an estimated value of £3M GBP. It is considered that this contract amendment can be awarded 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 UK Defence and Security Public Contract Regulations 2011, for technical reasons. CBRN DT has a continuing requirement to supply CBRN warning and reporting (W&R) software including training. This is essential to provide command and control where CBRN is an aspect of operations. Since the Second World War the majority of UK combat operations have been in coalitions, often including NATO partners. NATO sets common standards for CBRN warning and reporting software. BNT is the only provider who is also a member of the committee that manage updates to the NATO standards (ATTP-45). This ensures BNT software is future proofed against any planned changes to the software. The use of a CBRN warning and reporting software that was not compliant with the NATO standards would result in delays in receiving warnings of a CBRN attack, which would result in a risk to life which is intolerable to the Authority. Integrating new software applications onto a system as complicated as BOWMAN is technically challenging. The BOWMAN Joint Systems Integration Board (JSIB) currently estimate a period between 5-7 years to integrate and distribute new applications. As BRACIS has previously been integrated into BOWMAN, this work has been carried out. Hence any updates to BRACIS due to changes in the NATO standard are far simpler and quicker to integrate as the majority of work has already been undertaken.