Defence Online

Type of document: Contract Notice
Country: United Kingdom

1. Title: UNDERWATER TRANSDUCER CAPABILITY
2. Awarding Authority: Ministry of Defence, GB Email: hlander@dstl.gov.uk. (Hannah Lander)
3. Contract type: Service contract
4. Description: Request for Information only.
The Awarding Authority is collecting information about organisations in the specified location with expertise in acoustic transducers. Organisations consists of academia, start-ups, small-to-medium enterprises, and large corporations.
INTRODUCTION
The Authority is evaluating the current capability within the UK to design and manufacture underwater (UW) transducers for use in military application. All parts of the design lifecycle are of interest. Examples of parts of the design process include piezoelectric materials research, modelling of transducer properties through equivalent circuits or finite element methods (FEM), measuring properties of both the device and the active material, prototyping devices, iterative design, and testing & validation.
For manufacturing, the Authority is interested in the ability of organisations to manufacture parts of, or whole transducers (the active elements, housing, assembly of parts) at any capacity from a few prototypes up to large scale manufacture on the order of multiple thousands of units per year. Any skills in formulating large quantities of piezoelectric materials are included in the list of topics of interest.
Additionally, the Authority is desires to hear about the research, design and manufacture of acoustic transducers which do not use piezoelectric materials as the transducer element. Any research into acoustic transduction is of relevance to this information request.
5. CPV Code(s): 73100000, 73111000, 73112000, 73420000, 73300000
6. NUTS code(s): UKK, UKK1, UKK11, UK
7. Main site or location of works, main place of delivery or main place of performance: UK
8. Reference attributed by awarding authority: Project Code RQ0000084646
9. Estimated value of requirement: Not provided.
10. Listing Deadline: 16.6.2026 (17:00:00).
11. Address to which they must be sent: You must register or log in at Web: to participate in this tender
12. Other information: Notes
The requirement is for organisations to voluntarily submit information about their capabilities regarding the topics specified. The information will be used by the Authority to aid a capability assessment within the UK to design and manufacture UW transducers. The Authority will not share any named submitted information outside of UK government without specific approval. Responses to this request for information (RFI) will not influence the awarding of future contracts and responding is not a registration of interest in such future contacts. However, the Authority may contact organisations to ask more specific questions at a later date.
Whilst the focus is on UW transducers, the Authority is looking for information from all domains in which the skills to research, design and manufacture acoustic transducers are used. Examples include but are not limited to medical imaging, medical tools, range detection, non-destructive testing, thickness detection, crack detection, energy harvesting, UW imaging, marine seismic imaging, and UW transducers for use in sonar. The Authority encourages engagement in this RFI even if organisations are unsure if they fall into the mentioned categories or if they have skills and facilities they think will be applicable.
INSTRUCTIONS
Organisations are invited to provide information about the topics discussed in this RFI in any format they deem appropriate in a maximum of 10 pages. Please be sure to include information about:
Facilities, skills and experience regarding transducer research, design, testing and manufacturing
areas of expertise, e.g. medical imaging, crack detection.
Employment / group size with regards to transducers expertise
websites
location
openness to collaborate
interest in working with defence
No funding will be provided for participation in this RFI.
Suppliers are not required to provide any information on costs.
Information should be submitted to Sam Sparks ‘ssparks@dstl.gov.uk’ by 16th Jun
Procurement Route
Other
Please visit the website above for documentation
TKR-2026417-EX-1869695