The Supply and In-Service Support Of the Soft Landing System (SLS)

The Secretary of State for Defence intends to enter into a contract with Forest Safety Group Ltd (“Forest”) for the continued through-life support of existing fall bag Soft Landing Systems (“SLS”) including repair, maintenance, spares provision, training and technical support, together with the purchase of additional compatible SLS (“the Contract”). The duration of the new Contract will be five years together with two additional individual option years. The approximate value of the Contract is estimated to be £2.8 million ex VAT including the full exercise of the option years. In accordance with regulation 4 of The Defence and Security Public Contracts (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019 (SI 2019/697) this procurement falls to be regulated under the provisions of the Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011 as amended (in particular by SI 2019/697 and SI 2020/1450). Prior publication of a contract notice in the Official Journal of the European Union is no longer appropriate. It is considered that the award of the contract without prior publication of a contract notice in the UK e-notification service (in accordance with the relevant legislation) is lawful in accordance with regulations 16(1)(a)(ii) and 16(1)(b)(i) of the DSPCR 2011 for technical reasons and for the purchase of additional supplies. In respect of the existing supplies of SLS, Forest is the owner of several patents and design rights for the SLS and has exclusivity arrangements for certain materials used in the SLS. The Authority does not have sufficient rights in the information in the SLS to provide to an alternative supplier to manufacture new SLS equipment and undertake the repair, maintenance, training and subsequent safety certification of the new or existing supplies to the reasonable satisfaction of the Authority. Furthermore, as Design Authority only Forest has the accumulated expertise and technical know-how at its disposal required to undertake this work. This includes the intimate knowledge and understanding of the existing equipment used across the Authority’s platforms and the extreme range of operating environments and climactic conditions in which they are deployed, and for which the SLS have been specifically designed (to include impermeability to Aviation Fuel and paints, oils & lubricants, flame retardancy and UV stability). In respect of the additional supplies, to obtain supplies from a different contractor would create disproportionate technical difficulties in the operation and maintenance of the existing equipment and potential unacceptable interoperability and compatibility risks between all such existing and new equipment both per platform and between platforms, especially considering the life-saving safety criticality of the equipment. Furthermore it would cause significant inconvenience and substantial duplication of costs for the Authority. It is also vital that end users are trained and fully competent in the use of a single system. It would be impracticable and inadvisable for users to be trained to use more than one system. An attempt to integrate and utilise different proprietary systems in the environments and conditions in which they are deployed could lead to mistakes and potentially pose a risk to life.