Contract award · 5 Mar 2021
Logistic Drone Swarm Experimentation
Ministry of Defence awarded “Logistic Drone Swarm Experimentation” to Blue Bear Systems Research for £625k on 5 Mar 2021. Awarded without open competition.
No competition- Buyer
- Ministry of Defence · Ministry or any other national or federal authority, including their regional or local subdivisions
- Supplier
- Blue Bear Systems Research
- Value
- £625,000
- Contract date
- 5 Mar 2021
- Published
- 5 Mar 2021
- Procedure
- Negotiated without publication of a contract notice
- Sector
- Software & information systems · Software package and information systems (CPV 48000000)
- Region
- London
- Official notice
- 004495-2021 on Find a Tender
Awarded without open competition. The buyer went directly to one or a few suppliers instead of advertising the contract. Procurement rules allow this only in specific cases, such as extreme urgency, when only one supplier can do the work, or for call-offs from an existing framework.
Description
The JHub team, part of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence (MoD), intends to award a 4-month contract from March 2021 to July 2021 (with a value of £625,000) to Blue Bear Systems Research Ltd (BBSR) to supply nine micro-computers and bespoke 'swarming' software and integrate them onto existing Royal Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which are used as logistic resupply vehicles. It is considered that this contract can be awarded using the negotiated procedure without prior publication of a contract notice pursuant to regulation 16(1)(a)(ii) of the Defence and Security Public Contract Regulations 2011 for technical reasons. This is because BBSR's 'swarming' system is the only system considered to have the proven ability to a) connect with any existing UAV with minimal integration; and b) control multiple UAVs to operate autonomously in 'swarms'. BBSR is also the only company to have been granted permission from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to conduct 'swarm' flights of up to 20 UAVs in UK airspace, which is required in order to conduct the necessary flight trials.
About the supplier
- Blue Bear Systems Research: every public contract they have won.