What do they do at DE&S
This might be old news but what exactly do DE&S actually do
From the MoD web site
Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) equips and supports the UK’s armed forces for current and future operations. Employing approximately 22,500 people, with a budget of £13 billion, its Headquarters is located in Bristol with other sites located across the UK and overseas.
DE&S acquires and supports through-life, equipment and services ranging from ships, aircraft, vehicles and weapons, to information systems and satellite communications. As well as sustaining ongoing requirements including food, clothing, medical supplies and temporary accommodation, DE&S is also responsible for HM Naval Bases, the joint supply chain and British Forces Post Office (BFPO).
DE&S works closely with industry through partnering agreements and private finance initiatives in accordance with the Defence Industrial Strategy (DIS) to seek and deliver effective solutions for defence.
So with a staff of 22,500 one might reasonably assume that they actually have some expertise in defining project requirements, evaluating solutions and making decisions on what to buy.
Defense News ran with a story describing how when faced with a requirement from Afghanistan for a portable short gap crossing system (thats a ladder to you and me) instead of calling on the resources of its 22,500 employees it outsourced the job to BMT.
Responding to an urgent operational request from the frontline to come up with a better method of crossing ditches and scaling walls than a conventional ladder the Ministry of Defence turned to BMT Defence Services to provide an answer.
In the space of five weeks this summer the Bath, England-based consultancy conducted a survey of possible solutions and completed a competition involving more than a dozen bidders from the U.K. and overseas.
Eugene Morgan, the director of systems at BMT Defence Services, says the consultancy team running the project spoke to designers ranging from a supplier of ship gangways to a Formula 1 racing team in order to find the best possible solutions.
Morgan said recommendations on the top three or four designs for the 3 metre bridge requirement was submitted to the MoD last month.
I suppose it’s a good thing that the requirement was met in double quick time but when ministers talk up the UoR process as a triumph for the MoD, how it is responding to need, being flexible blah blah do they actually mean
‘ we just pay someone else to do it for us because we are tooo busy buying aircraft carriers’
Is this another indicator of something we covered earlier, it’s not the numbers of civil servants that count but the types. If DE&S doesn’t have the bandwidth to run an acquisition exercise for what is more or less an upgraded ladder, then we need to be concerned.
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Sorry Tank sometimes I do get bit hasty at bashing Government organisations and the way they are run without much detailed information about what the internal workings are like. Leadership is indeed the biggest problem in the United Kingdom and not just in defence I mean everywhere. So I generally misplace my anger rather than directing at the idiots currently in Government making the decision and influencing those trying to do a good job. If the Government could clearly decide upon what it wants the Armed Forces to be capable of and then actually stuck to it we would get somewhere. DE&S should then essentially know what they had coming up so could most likely perform better as they could actually plan and stick to that plan without things suddenly changing. A proper direction would also help industry also plan and organise themselves appropriately hopefully resulting in a stable industrial base rather than being hit with sudden peaks and troughs in demand.
Tank, seriously don’t be afraid to say what you think even if that is to call us a bunch of ####’s :D
I don’t think anyone is actually questioning the need for the kit because that is clearly the realm of the user.
As I said before we always try and look beyond the easy headlines and in general are rather sympathetic to the MoD, the thrust of the post was questioning if we have enough people, given we have to outsource what is, lets be honest, a simple requirement.
How have we got to the point where we have to outsource this activity?
That said, we aren’t uncritical either and if one reads an NAO report it is easy to think things are in a poor state, I don’t think we would be alone in having the opinion that something is seriously wrong at Abbey Wood.
Have at look of these posts
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2010/02/off-the-shelf/
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2009/11/mod-bonus-payments-or-is-that-chicken-feed/
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2009/11/the-civil-service-bonus-story/
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2009/10/is-it-time-to-kill-the-defence-industrial-strategy/
http://www.thinkdefence.co.uk/2009/10/shiny-arse-civil-servants/
As out About Us section makes perfectly clear, if you want to write a counter piece, let me know and I will publish it
It would also be interesting to see who actually won the contract
sorry if my first post came across as negative but working for the dept I get somewhat frustrated at all the negative press!
But to highlight some issues, DE&S has approximately 9500 civilian staff, the MoD as a whole has 86000 spread everywhere and doing everything, we are about to have an arbitrary cut of 10000 staff and come the SDR I am sure that DE&S will be even more cut than it currently is. The number of posts vacant are already hefty and this puts added strain onto existing staff, what with cuts to the terms and conditions, looming pay freezes and forced relocation to Bristol DE&S morale is probably at an all time low.
Ladders, let me just address this one having had some personal involvement on the fringes, the reason they have been procured is due to a change in tactics in entering hostile compounds, previously troops went in through the front door, now they are doing an up and over routine. These ladders must be lightweight, easily man portable and able to stand up to the weight of a fully loaded soldier. The other element on this is the Sun factor as I alluded to in my first post, we have a responsibility to ensure that the kit we issue is “fit for purpose”.
I’m not sure that I would agree that the French are a comparable model for the UK, we have a somewhat broader base to look at on multinational projects regarding procuremnt and a somewhat clouded view of where we sit in the grand scheme of things, do we align more closely with the USA as we do most of our ventures with them or do we aligm with Europe whom we are closer to?
DE&S have been hit with year on year change programmes and having military posted in and out does not help the procurement process at all, the changing requirements from the end user also do not help.
Essentially things are not as simple as they appear and we are bound by many rules and regs which I doubt apply to outside industry.
The real fact of the matter is that the Armed forces have not had the investment they need nor the clear direction from Govt on exactly what it is they are expected to be able to do.
Remember when I posted that long winded, badly punctuated rant a few months back, effectivly saying the Armed forces should receive a budget and spend it as they wish?
Yeah, this is a good example of what I meant.
Its A ******* LADDER.
It does not need to go to a strategic procurement level, who then contact F1 teams!!!
I believe the ‘ladder’ scenario demonstrates the biggest problem with procurement, in that those responsible for the acquisition of equipment are somewhat divorced from the end user. Why should an outside agency be called in for any reason? The question should be asked, why didn’t DE&S pass it back to the end user?
Afghanistan will have its fair share of REME officers in country who have a degree in engineering, as no doubt do RAF and RN engineering officers, the Sappers with their bridge building experience would also have a great deal to contribute.
This may sound a very simplistic way of looking at the subject but ask yourself the question, if this was a large construction project and a particular piece of equipment was required, would they ‘fart’ about sending requests back to the UK and have a long winded procurement process to acquire the requisite kit? No, they would trust the judgement of the site manager/project manager and leave them to get on with the job, and the cost managers would handle the accounts.
There’s enough brains in Afghanistan to work out what they need, they also have internet access, so what’s wrong with, “These look ok, send us a couple, if they work large order to follow.”
If DE&S were running a building site, would the job ever get finished?
Tank I am aware of that thanks the French DGA personnel figure also includes military service personnel from each of the armed forces.
About the ladders well I have no idea about liability and all the legal stuff but of course you wouldn’t exactly go to B&Q but you order a few sets of ladders and test them at your own risk. After you’ve tested them and the blokes who will use them are happy then you go actual manufacturer and ask for several thousand or whatever number of ladders. I’m pretty sure the actual end users could come up with something that suits them whether it is a standard aluminium ladder set or a proper gangway. However a good quality aluminium ladder should do fine and it’ll support the weight of a squaddie in body armour with their basic equipment and it’ll also be reasonably cheap and easy to carry.
One thing I would like to ask the request for a ladder type thingymajig was made in 2009 so what had our service personnel been doing before they got or will get their equipment? I would guess they do/done that thing that is now so dangerous and that is used their brain. Maybe all they done was got hold of some ladders and used them or maybe they simply avoided the obstacle by going round it or through it.
Hi Tank
Thanks for your first comment
If you look back through our posts you will see we consistently take a supportive line, trying to see through the knee jerk easy tabloid reactions, in fact we have done a number of in depth articles that debunk the ‘MoD penpushers’ line.
I don’t think anyone is questioning the need or even the desire to get the best kit possible but if all of DE&S and DSTL (military or civilian) don’t have either a) the expertise or b) the time to manage the acquisition of whgat is a very simple piece of equipment then this is simply not good enough and cause for concern
just so you are aware, the 22000 personnel in DE&S include military personnel from all 3 services
And yes ladders being all well and good but think on this, if they pop down to B&Q and these ladders break whilst being used resulting in fatalities what then?
Erm! a portable short gap crossing system aka a ladder essentially, sounds a bit like a trip to the local B&Q or builders merchant.
One thing I still get surprised and amazed at is the sheer number of staff employed by DE&S 22,500 that is roughly one person in DE&S for every 10 full time members of the armed forces. I would be tempted to say allow each of the three services to do it themselves employing on average 4000 people per armed service. There would of course need to be some sort of oversight organisation to ensure the services don’t go crazy so maybe another 1000 people to do that so maybe 13,000 people needed. This would essentially mean over 9000 jobs getting shed so not really politically palatable but you could always lie and say that you’d increase the size of the uniformed personnel which would keep some people on side. Of course I have no idea if it would work but just doing a quick Google I found this http://www.dasa.mod.uk/modintranet/dp/index.php?c=3&s=7&l=english&m=english so apparently the French DGA employs around 15,000 people. France is I would argue comparable similar defence budgets similar sized armed forces with similar populations so why a difference of around 7000 personnel?? Just for the fun of it the Swedish FMV employs just over 2000 people yes I know you can’t compare Sweden with the UK but it’s interesting to note.
lol – although I allegedly know what I am talking about I apparently cannot type – spot the typo, should have been:
“and that I most assuredly did know what I was talking about” :-)
So my only experience of MOD procurement is not a very good one. Just after I joined my TA unit, which had a lot to do with ‘media’ of various sources they moved from Macs to PC’s. As Afghanistan began a UOR was issued for transportable and rugged kit (most of the units kit at that time was in box bodies on 5 tonne trucks), this included commercial ruggedised laptops. The machines delivered were not fit for purpose, being very low on memory able to run Windows and MS Word, but certainly not able to run the desktop publishing package (Quark) or photo editing (Photoshop) without grinding to a halt. When the Project Manager from Qinetic brought in a guy from Ultra Electronics to whom they had “outsourced” the project, I took them to task over this. The guy from Ultra complained to my CO (RAF Regiment Wing Commander) that I was rude and did not know what I was talking about. My CO reminded him that we were a TA unit, and that I was an IT professional, with a degree in computing, and a Chartered IT Professional with the British Computer Society, and that I most assuredly did not what I was talking about…. it was fun to watch !
Moral of the story – if we (or they, whatever) cannot even spec a device as simple as a commercial laptop computer to meet the ‘customers’ requirements, is it any wonder that we must outsource purchasing of ladders (!) or that FRES became what it did…… ??? :-(