Work has been underway to develop data insights which will improve procurement options for the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) and bring in the best bidders for contracts.
The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) has used the Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) as part of its bidding process to award the contract for a new generation of search and rescue.
The UK Second-Generation Search and Rescue Aviation programme (UKSAR2G) will replace the current contract, due to finish in 2024. It is designed to give a more modern, flexible, responsive and cost-effective way of providing the right search and rescue capabilities in the right places, improving response times, agility and efficiency – and ultimately saving more lives.
The MCA saw UKSAR2G procurement as an opportunity to make sense of all the data it gathers to help assess optimum future asset and infrastructure placing, as well as help manage the bid and governance process.
What was created was something truly novel – enabling industry access to real-world scenarios based on MCA data. This helped interested bidders design a more efficient and effective service which, in turn, enabled potential solutions to be created and tested.
Designed to be “relatively freeform”, potential suppliers could model where bases should be, and what assets should be at each, based on demand forecasts rather than being constrained by the present set-up. Crucially, a ‘pass’ of what the MCA needed was built into the system, so suppliers could see instantly if their bid met the minimum requirements, de-risking the procurement process for both sides. The MCA also used the tool to build its cost model, and to prove its case through the governance process of multiple assurance and approval cycles.
Neil Grant, programme director for the MCA, said: “We knew that we had amassed a wealth of data from the existing service over the past nine years, and we wanted to utilise this so we could understand future demand for our services plus analyse emerging patterns and themes. This showed there were potential different ways of delivering the service in the future.”
More than 30 aviation companies signed up to use the model, which provided a green tick or a red cross against scenarios showing whether bidders would be successful or not.
Steve Pickering, the MCA’s aviation programme manager, said: “Before we even started evaluating, bidders knew whether their solution would pass the criteria required and that helped them as well as us.”
The success of this data-sharing and interpretation model is now shaping how the MCA uses data modelling to plan as well as understand developing trends more widely across its services.
Image credit: JASPERIMAGE / Shutterstock.com
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Post written by: Vicky Maggiani
Vicky has worked in media for over 20 years and has a wealth of experience in editing and creating copy for a variety of sectors.
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