Defence Equipment and Support is the organisation in the MoD responsible for equipping and supporting the armed forces.
From it’s web site, its role is to..
DE&S acquires and supports equipment and services, including ships, aircraft, vehicles and weapons, information systems and satellite communications. As well as continuing to supply general requirements, food, clothing, medical and temporary accommodation, DE&S is also responsible for HM Naval Bases, the joint support chain and British Forces Post Office.
It would be a reasonable assumption that the organisation has the skills and capability to organise ‘buying stuff’
But despite its multi million pound budget and thousands of civilian and military staff, the deal to bring HMS Protector into service was beyond it, having to contract QinetiQ to do it instead.
This press release from QinetiQ caught my eye..
QinetiQ Defence Acquisition Lifecycle Services, the leading provider of services supporting the acquisition lifecycle, has assisted the UK MoD in the provision of a new ice patrol ship. She will replace HMS Endurance, at least temporarily, which suffered serious damage when she flooded in the South Atlantic in 2008 and was withdrawn from service pending a decision on her future.
The need to put in place an accelerated replacement programme required the MOD to contract with industry to provide a number of specialist acquisition lifecycle services including risk management, requirement and capability planning, cost estimation, operational effectiveness analysis for the business case and preparation of the investment appraisal. QinetiQ was chosen based on its depth of capabilities in the areas identified and its track record coupled with the breadth of skills and the quality of the QinetiQ technical and commercial consulting team
So DE&S, an organisation that does acquisitions, doesn’t do it anymore.
Have we really stripped DE&S of the skills and people do such a relatively simple job like leasing an existing ship and making a few modifications?
If DE&S have to outsource something like this, what next?
Is this what a certain Mr Gray wants, maybe QinetiQ could do a better and cheaper job, he certainly mentioned outsourcing some of DE&S’s activities to the private sector
Anyone know?
. . . and to think that ten years ago we could have had Qinetic do the job WITHOUT a whacking great profit on top.
What makes it worse is Qinetiq isn’t in a healthy postion really, cuts have affected them. I think recently they’ve made people redundant.
You’re right DE&S can’t even manage this simple task?
This is a fantastic little project for any junior person to be involved with. They’ve got the lease of the ship to deal with (and other legal requirements probably) then they’ve got to get a company to do the modifications.
Such a task would be a good example of how to manage costs and manage defence companies to get what you want. Not that Qinetiq has not done a bad job, I’ve not heard anything bad so far. But how can DE&S learn the basics again when it outsources the work?
Perhaps DE&S is in such a bad state they can’t be trusted to do it, the ministers haven’t got a clue what they are doing long term.
With the mess the MOD is in perhaps it was best to outsource the work? like get it done and not allow the government to screw it up. Perhaps cost wise it was not worth the effort considering the much bigger problems in the MOD need sorting.
Nothing is simple when government gets its hands on it.
Just wait till Crapita supply fire control software etc
Trouble with outsourcing is, outsource enough to one particular company and it will erode to being no better than the agency that outsourced it originally as it grows fat and inefficient and greedy and incompetent by a constant flow of government money.
QinetiQ is a defence research company, formerly, DERA. Am I the only one surprised about them doing acquisition consulting?
They will just follow the money, good to see you around again 13th, hope you are well
“Have we really stripped DE&S of the skills and people ”
Yes, cuts and and with those with skills remaining, no prospects of a good career to move forward in and pay/pension freezes whilst those in prvate sector get greater pensions/pay/benefits? Especially whilst your organisation gets slagged off so much? You bet those with the skills/ambitions would leave.
This kidna sums up the whole public organisations, from defence to HMRC to NHS… what a shame :c
Mike, its probably the subject of a high powered consultancy project but I think you are spot on although I think the research points to public sector employees having eliminated the pay gap and pension benefits are as we all know much better.
I don’t take the easy line of criticising ‘pen pushers’ which is why I asked if we had stripped DE&S of the skills and people and as you say, if you are bright a career there perhaps doesn’t hold a lot of alure which is perhaps why there was an avalanche of applications for redundancy.
We often hear comparisons between civil servants and private sector directors for example in respect of pay but on the public sector there never seems to be sackings, unlike in the private sector
I wonder if completely outsourcing this is such a bad idea, know outputs, known costs so as long as you can maintain competition why not
Perhaps their people were busy? Perhaps as the RN does not lease many ships then DE&S don’t have any lease contract experts???
In my very limited dealings with QinetiC on a quite small and simple UOR project I found them to be arrogant arseholes who did not have a clue and could not even do a simple IT requirements analysis – can’t tar them all with the same brush though I suppose……..
@TD
From some of the stats I have seen about the pay gap they do not compare like for like, the Tax Payer’s Alliance was going on about Administrator’s in public sector getting around £30k compared to about £14k in the private sector while blindly ignoring the fact that you cannot map job titles, as an Administrator in the public sector does is not the same as the private sector – they are not clerical staff answering phones, doing data entry and the like, they are usually managers in charge of teams of support staff (for example at a university all administrators rather than clerical staff need a degree and are consider at least equal to a junior lecturer).
They also highlighted cleaners on high salaries, the figure was so high (over £25k) that I can only conclude that either their information was wrong or there was an error in their data or the Government departments pay a living wage in London, as certainly Kent County Council does not (it pays a pittance for cleaners).
The truth of the matter is for professional level jobs the pay gap is often the other way around once you factor in bonuses and the pension provision is often roughly the same, I should know I have worked in a Government research Lab, an engineering consultancy and now a university and apart from the amount of holiday in the engineering consultancy (which was countered by a significantly larger bonus which as a % was in double figures compare to the Government research lab where the average performance related bonus was about 5%) all three of them offered broadly similar terms and conditions including a final salary pension – of course I have been at the university for 6 years now so the civil service may have moved on a lot since then.
A couple of years ago there had been proposals to outsource the lot – privatise DE&A while retaining government ownership. It was thought then, that as a public agency it’s staff were out of their depth when dealing with industry suppliers.
It never happened, due to the fear that effectively privatising all defence acquisition and support would result in the defence industry lining up to ass rape the MoD, while laughing and forcing gold-plated ships, vehicles and aircraft down it’s throat.
I wonder whether the current agency is fit for the job.
I suspect part of the problem is that many of the staff are so focussed on getting UOR and HERRICK related equipment into service and supporting it, that there aren’t many spare bodies around at the moment to do new projects.
Bristol is a nightmare place to be a CS – they’re low on morale, there are dozens of vacancies at all levels (at a time when the MOD CS has essentially frozen its internal jobs market, Abbey Wood is still full of jobs that no one wants). People don’t want to move there as the CS has now stopped paying any form of transfer package, so you’d have to pay to move to the west country at your expense for 2 years, then move again when done, or alternatively rent a flat and pay a mortgage at the same time. Few (if any) CS can afford to move to Abbey Wood for a 2 year career posting, and so its stuck there, with near London prices and no london weighting, and with an aging workforce who all seemingly want to leave (huge numbers of voluntary redundancy applications from DE&S).
The best people are doing theatre related work and they’ve probably run out of bodies to do the jobs. I know it sounds crazy but its a dark time to be in DE&S right now and its only going to get worse.
Thanks Jim, I have just read in a Parliamentary Answer that there are over 200 UOR’s in the pipeline and yet to be delivered
Tubby
One of the things I deal with on a regular basis is the
‘If I had not joined the CS with my qualifications I would be running ICI by now’
Mentality.
I meet a lot of Civil Servents. Who are on £50,000 plus, who in the private sector would earn half that. Dispropotionate ammounts of them are not pen pushers, they are work pushers; adept at pushing work off to others or into the long grass.
One organisation run BY HMG has a ‘Clear desk policy’ that is in dealing with a certain amountof queries form public the staff are expected to deal with X number and not to leave untill they have cleared them. So at the end of the day they pick up wht they have not done and put them in an envelope and post them to themselves.
Thus clearing the desk and putting that work to the bottom of the recieved pile.
I do not know which Business potentate spoke to Parliament last year produced a report saying he could do the job with half the people for a third the price (That is running all the UK CS), but form my experiance he was being cautious about it.
I speak a some one owed £70,000 from HMG for work going back to February, with no sign of future payment…..
A worker for one other branch of govt I deal with, called her outfit
‘A home for people who could not make it in the real world’.
Moved MOD(PE) out of London (notwithstanding Horrorgate etc.)…. for me the worst move ever MOD made.
And they wonder why they can not get the staff and people do not want to move from MB in and out of procurement.
Ask Jim if he would move down there.
It is really irritating to reflect that as we moved out of the London buildings like Fleetbank House, other Government bodies moved in behind us – the Office of Government Commerce needed to be there, but MoD did not, apparently.
To an extent, the overhead spent buying things is just spent man marking industry. We might be better just letting them get on with it.
Its not like for like, but compare the numbers of people MoD fielded to equip the Saudis with the number of people it takes to buy the same kit for HMG.
These guys buy (and then sell on) everything from Typhoons, ships to VIP aircraft, airfields and entire military cities – I think there are about 20 commercial staff doing it and all through a single Prime Contractor.
How many MOD commercial officers to buy the same type of kit for MOD?
From last year. Para100 onwards addresses skills and staffing at DE&S, and mentions out sourcing work. But all your favourite procurement f’k ups get a mention too. http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmdfence/99/9905.htm#a6
Through-life support contracts are a big part of the future strategy of big defence contractors like QuinetiQ, Thales, BAE…they’ve got bugger all else to do. Aside from CVF, there is Type 26 in ten years time and little else to build.
@IXION
I will admit that some of the senior people I worked with in the Government research laboratory might have been extremely clever and delivered results on their research projects but they where definitely unemployable outside of the civil service, and I also met some people who where “politicians” who got where they where by stealing their juniors work and passing it off as theirs.
However in terms of workload I often did 45+ hours per week in the Government research lab, one memorable spring I worked 7 days a week for 6 weeks to complete a couple of projects before the end of March. The job with the lowest work load was the engineering consultancy (apart from right now at the university which is why I am looking for another job, as there has been a big downturn in work this year due to Government cut backs) and I did not see many people who had little to do in the Government research lab, but then I joined after a three year freeze of vacancies in that particular lab so there was a massive backlog to get through.
I would tend to agree with ixion on this. Though it is easy to point the finger and I’m sure those at abbey wood are trying there best and feel under real pressure. Having been to Bristol a number of times I can see why people are reluctant to go there it has really bad traffic with no where near the the public transport capabilities as the other big cities and is very very expensive. Why they didn’t move de&s to the north west or Scotland were most of the manufacturing takes place I don’t know.
Having said that I would close the whole thing down and start again with a vastly smaller number of people. To often theyve been design by committe at abbey wood with revolving leadership and that never works. I would also suggest military personal should have simply nothing to do with it. Policy and future requirement can come from each services operational evaluation and test units and then evaluated by the engineers at dstl for practicality and if there possible. This could then be passed to mod for agreement and all de&s do it tender the contract. No capability creep or radical changes should be allowed on this tender is done. These larger companies have big project management teams and excellent customer support capabilities let the do that bit. Realism is needed in the bidding to.
Tubby 45 hours a week just isnt trying:). 70 hour weeks in engineering has been common now for well over a long time. Especially the last year. It a weird cantraction I know but engineering seems to do well when the economy is in recession and poorly when it’s booming
@ Mark,
When I was in the engineering consultancy, beyond the junior engineers who where on site supervising the contractors, no-one did more than 40 hours a week in the rail division (roughly 160 in London, with Satellite offices) – in part it was due to the fact that the headquarters was in London and everyone commuted at least an hour a day each way, and in part it was due to the fact that we did not get paid overtime once you got to the equivalent to chartered and therefore most people did not feel inclined to do it.
Current job used to be roughly 40 hours a week with the occasional time when you have to stay to 8 or come in on Saturday which is about right for a central office service outside a Russell Group/94 Group research intensive university, (would be higher in Russell/94 group university). Currently I could do all my work if I worked solidly in 30 hours a week
Way back in 89 I spent a summer working at what was then RARDE(CH). Three things stick in my mind really, firstly that half the department did exactly nothing all day, but the other half were incredible professionals, and getting anything done was next to impossible. At one point I needed some tank gun barrels moved: the crane section required a week of phone calls and personal visits to make the 500m journey required. A contract to produce 25 1 inch square transducer mounts (just tapped steel) was let to an outside contractor as it was explained to me that the hundreds of machinists available would take at least 6 months to produce the same.
Much as I hate the crudeness of the solution, really the way to improve this is to force a reduction of staff by assuming the civilian staff of the MOD as a whole require exactly 20% of the defence budget and no more, and ensuring most work is outsourced. Having more Procurement staff than required merely encourages the sort of polishing cannonballs that gave us those Special Forces Chinooks; or not, as it turned out. The job is to buy solutions, if you want something developed, let a contract to a private company
Whilst I agree that there needs to be a reduction in the numbers of civilian staff within the MoD, the area that really needs improvement is Programme Management at all levels. THere also needs to be major reform of the procurement process as the existing CADMID system lends itself too easily to keeping programme in limbo or slowed to a crawl.
Outsourcing is not the Holy Grail solution to the MoD’s problems. It does give major Contractors something to do but like PFIs the commercial side of the contract can take years to solve, trying to cover all eventualities and avoiding additional costs down the line through unforseen events.
Turning to the Special Forces Chinooks, the decision to proceed with this programme was porbably down to the Engineers and not the supply or commercial sections. This is why the old DPA was such a cock up as Engineers drove the procurement programmes with little thought to contracts and in service support. This was why spares had to be taken off the Typhoon production line to keep the inital Typhoons flying but replacements were often not ordered until it was discovered they were missing from the production line causing delays. TLMPs were supposed to stop this as was the IPT system but when Bristol Staff refused to move to Cambridgeshire when a certain platform had matured the whole thing fell apart.
The whole value for money thing must be readdressed. AS a principal it is fine but it must not acuse inferior kit to be purchased in order to gain a minimal saving.
Finally whist the GOvernment is keen to announce programmes that will not come to fruition until 2020 at the earliest it currently cannot fund anything beyond the life of a 5 year Parliament. This needs to change! One solution would be for defence to be covered by a multiparty panel where all major parties sign on for a given programme, and the same would be required to cancel a programme. THere has to be away to have funding protected when programmes can last for decades. Industry need to know where it stands, and the MoD will have much firmer long term costing.
Just a few thoughts.
This is a comment for Brian Black 22 July. The idea of using private consultancy companies to head a Defence procurement was tried in Australia a few years back. It didn’t work, the consultancy fees ended up being a sizable chunk of the total project cost and the outcome was no better than similar projects handled in house. The other stumbling block was that the companies who had the resources to manage the procurement for government generally had outside commercial relationships with the same suppliers. While the Australian Defence procurement agency Defence Materiel Organisation(DMO)heavily uses consultants and professional service providers to support projects, having a company front a project has not been repeated.
That said DMO seems to have all the same problems of recruitment and retention and bad press as your organisation, however when you scratch the surface many of the problems relate not to the tendering and contracting process but to fuzzy/contradictory/just downright risky requirement specifications.
Hi Lord Jim,
Absolutely “Finally whist the GOvernment is keen to announce programmes that will not come to fruition until 2020 at the earliest it currently cannot fund anything beyond the life of a 5 year Parliament. This needs to change! One solution would be for defence to be covered by a multiparty panel where all major parties sign on for a given programme, and the same would be required to cancel a programme. ”
- just have to put a sensible cut-off for what goes into this “pipe”
- A bn £? Upfront capital expenditure, at the planned volume level, including R&D (thru-life costs are what ever one chooses to write down, in the US the approach is much more rigorous and actually fit to be used a basis for decisions)
This is where things really need to improve. The current “Capability” approach to programmes can lead to programme being stuck in the Assessment and Developement stages for years as people try to match a platform to a required capability that keeps changing year on year. This is why I have constantly advocated the “Vanilla” approach where a programme is based on a platform that meets the basic requirements but has the capacity of addpns later in its service life. You therefore get the “Vanilla” platform into service on time and budget much more readily and adapt it to changing requirements. This is a win win for both industry and the MoD with far more transarent initial and through life costs. It also makes the purchase of “Off the shelf” platforms much easier as the number of prerequisites are much smaller.
Mind you I have tried this approach on a small scale regarding packing and transpoortation equipment for engine modules and had to deal with higher and higher hurdles until I hit a brick wall put up by he “This is not how we do things”, brigade. The programme I started and managed found a way to store modules in containers that cost less than a tenth of what traditional containers cost and which could be flat packed when empty for storage and transportation. The design was signed off, meeting all required standards and the prototype was accepted by the people who would use them with minir modifications but the powers that be cancelled it because they misread the developement contract which stated any modification were and the contractor’s expense, and thought it would cost the MoD more money!
Anyway rant over.