Get the Ship in Shape

Overview

HMS QNLZ currently uses a physical peg board (for core Ship’s Company) a T-card holder (for accredited visiting contractors/shore support staff) and a visitor log (for all other visitors) to account for the number of personnel on board.

This competition is seeking novel ideas for how to account for, and track, personnel on board the UK’s largest Royal Navy ship.

Challenges

This competition has 2 challenges:

Your proposal must meet Challenge 1 (mandatory) but proposals that meet both Challenge 1 and Challenge 2 are welcomed.

Challenge 1: Accounting for personnel (mandatory)

This challenge is seeking prototype technologies with the ability to positively log personnel on and off the ship; including the ability to add ad-hoc visitors quickly and without additional staff resources. It must provide an accurate readout of the number of personnel on board in real time.

Challenge 2: Personnel tracking (optional)

This challenge is seeking prototype technologies that would, in an emergency situation, allow for the immediate positive location of all personnel on board. Whilst this does not have to be an exact location, it must significantly narrow the location of the person to a section of the ship.

Scope

The following are considered within scope for this competition:

• technologies that reduce the administration burden on ship’s staff
• technologies that increase the speed and accuracy of accounting for personnel entering / leaving the ship
• technologies that track / locate personnel on board the ship
• technologies that offer instant (or near-instant) recording and relay of personnel accounting and tracking information
• technologies that use open architecture which allow information to be easily exchanged between existing and future ships’ systems
• technologies capable of achieving appropriate approvals such as Defence Assurance and Information Security (DAIS) accreditation, fulfilling the requirements of DE&S’ Change Impact Assessment Process (CIAP).

Funding Costs

The funding of at least £250k is expected to fund multiple proposals. Individual proposals must be lower than £125k including all costed options; any proposals received that are in excess of £125k will be automatically deemed non-compliant.

Contracts will be awarded for an initial duration of 3.5 months with further costed options included for up to a further 5.5 months trials and tests.

Exclusions

The following are considered out of scope for this competition:

• technologies requiring extensive use of radio frequencies (RF). Longer range RF technologies, including Wi-Fi, are not considered appropriate because of the need to use the solution in a warfighting situation where emissions must be reduced
• technologies that significantly increase the enter / egress logistical burden or have an overall net increase in administration overhead
• technologies that require use of embedded on-board networking technology during the trial period.

For this competition, DASA are not interested in proposals that:

• constitute consultancy, paper-based studies, literature reviews or any solutions that are not ready to test or trial on board a ship
• do not offer significant benefit to the current HMS QNLZ capability
• are an identical resubmission of a previous bid to DASA or MOD without modification
• offer demonstrations of off-the-shelf products requiring no development (unless applied in a novel way for this competition)
• offer no real long-term prospect of integration onto HMS QNLZ
• offer no real prospect of out-competing the existing solution
• cannot be trialled during the duration of the contract in line with the testing and trialling guidelines.

Please visit DASA’s competition page for further information, including terms and conditions and application guidance.