£2,500,000.00

The Lightning Delivery Team (LDT), part of the UK Ministry of Defence, intends to award a contract to BAE Systems (Operations) Limited (‘BAES’) to provide support to Mission Planning Environment (MPE) software integration. This will involve the running of software trials and developing reports to provide the Authority with evidence to support its safety assurance on the MPE software developed under the Lightning Programme. This evidence then forms the basis of the Authority’s safety case approvals. It is considered that this requirement can be placed using the Negotiated Procedure without prior publication of a contract notice pursuant to Regulation 16(1)(a)(ii) of the UK Defence and Security Public Contracts Regulations 2011. The Lightning Programme Prime Contractor, Lockheed Martin, will only share in-depth software details with BAES due to their position within the Programme. BAES possesses accreditation from LM and the US Government which enables them to access the software in accordance with security requirements. To conduct the level of safety assurance the Authority requires an independent organisation needs to have in-depth access to the software. No independent contractor other BAES would have such access. Significant additional risk would be carried in the operation of the Lightning without the level of assurance in the software that is provided by BAES. BAES have a representative test environment in which this software can be integrated with Lightning hardware and software to provide further assurance on the new MPE software.