Purchase of Tethered Un-Crewed Air Systems and Integrated Payloads

Description

Purchase of Tethered Un-Crewed Air Systems and Integrated Payloads Lot 1: The Royal Navy, part of the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), intends to modify an existing contract with Evolve Dynamics Ltd, under Contract Reference 702431454 for the Purchase of Tethered Un-Crewed Air Systems and Integrated Payloads, to include the purchase of an additional radio system. It is considered that the award of the contract modification without prior publication of a contract notice in the UK e-notification service (in accordance with the relevant legislation) is lawful in accordance with regulation 72(1)(b) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (as amended (in particular by Statutory Instrument 2020/1319)) because it constitutes a permitted modification under that regulation. This is because these additional goods have become necessary and to introduce a change of contractor at this stage cannot be made for economic and technical reasons as only Evolve Dynamics Ltd has the necessary technical knowledge and design information to integrate the additional goods with the existing equipment, which is necessary to provide this requirement. In addition, there are very specific interoperability and testing requirements which require the new equipment to work with this existing equipment to ensure that the requirements detailed in the original Contract can be met. To introduce a change in Contractor at this stage would also cause significant inconvenience, delays and substantial duplication of cost for the MOD Lot 1: The Royal Navy, part of the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), intends to modify an existing contract with Evolve Dynamics Ltd, under Contract Reference 702431454 for the Purchase of Tethered Un-Crewed Air Systems and Integrated Payloads, to include the purchase of an additional radio system. It is considered that the award of the contract modification without prior publication of a contract notice in the UK e-notification service (in accordance with the relevant legislation) is lawful in accordance with regulation 72(1)(b) of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (as amended (in particular by Statutory Instrument 2020/1319)) because it constitutes a permitted modification under that regulation. This is because these additional goods have become necessary and to introduce a change of contractor at this stage cannot be made for economic and technical reasons as only Evolve Dynamics Ltd has the necessary technical knowledge and design information to integrate the additional goods with the existing equipment, which is necessary to provide this requirement. In addition, there are very specific interoperability and testing requirements which require the new equipment to work with this existing equipment to ensure that the requirements detailed in the original Contract can be met. To introduce a change in Contractor at this stage would also cause significant inconvenience, delays and substantial duplication of cost for the MOD