DCNS Announcement
Written by: DCNS on 16 May, 2012NOTE – Intellect is helping MOD engage industry with the DCNS programme. The following is a direct extract of the most recent Blog from Cdre Jamie Hay RN who is the DCNS Programme Director, thus the views below are those directly provided by MOD:
There has been plenty going on in the DCNS Programme, so my update is long overdue. Apologies! Readers will, I am sure, be aware that following engagement with the Chief of Defence Materiel (CDM) earlier in the year I made two important changes to the way in which the programme was being implemented.
Firstly we have grouped the Managed Services into a number of Towers to mitigate the high risk of transitioning from our current major prime contracts to the ‘multi-source’ target supply chain model. My intent is that the Managed Services will still be discrete within the Towers so that we can drive out duplication and keep pace with the innovation, service improvement and cost reduction available as the market continues to evolve. We have decided to perform the Service Integration across the Towers in-house rather than engaging an independent Services Integrator (SI) at this stage. The reasons for this are twofold: the time taken to run the competitions for an independent SI was forecast to take 18–24 months and so (with the exit from our current ‘Big Five’ contracts looming) we were having to procure the Towers of managed services in parallel with an SI who would therefore have no influence over their commercial model; and from a risk viewpoint the Department was not yet confident that the proposed commercial model for the independent SI managing the supply chain on our behalf would work as intended.
Secondly we have decided to engage a DCNS Strategic Partner not only to help us with the Service Integration, but also to bolster our capability for Programme Management and Business Change, deliver support to the Assessment Phases for the projects for successor services (Emporium and Grapevine) and help us with the transition from our current arrangement to the future model. I am hoping that the Strategic Partner will help us mitigate the considerable risks involved in transition and maximise our opportunity to realise the benefits of improved end-to-end integration, greater agility to meet the users needs with the best the market can offer and all at significantly reduced cost. The response to the advertisement seeking a Strategic Partner was very encouraging and we received 10 responses to the PQQ. We have today informed the bidders of the outcome of the evaluation of these responses and have invited four to proceed to the next stage:
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My aim is that we will be ready to contract with a partner in the summer, subject, of course, to Departmental, Treasury and Cabinet Office approval. Meanwhile the Programme Business case has been updated to reflect the lower risk approach being adopted and is on its way to the MOD Investment Approvals Committee (including in the same paper the ‘Initial Gate’ for Project Grapevine and the engagement of the Strategic Partner).
The Strategic Partner focus will be support to incremental planning, development and delivery of outcomes. The successful team is expected to be fully-embedded within the programme by early autumn this year.
