Helicopter Maintenance & Role Equipment

Concepts

• helicopters
• provision of maintenance services
• helicopter maintenance & role equipment
• carrickfergus
• repair and maintenance
• specialist role equipment upgrades
• role equipment
• helicopter maintenance
• psni's helicopter fleet
• fitment

Location

Carrickfergus

Description

Provision of maintenance services, specialist role equipment upgrades and fitment for PSNI's helicopter fleet.

Total Quantity or Scope

Provision of maintenance services, specialist role equipment upgrades and fitment for PSNI's helicopter fleet

Award Detail

Award Criteria

CPV Codes

• 50212000 - Repair and maintenance services of helicopters

Indicators

• Award on basis of price.

Legal Justification

PSNI currently have 3 Eurocopter Helicopters operating from a location in Northern Ireland. Provision of aerial support is a province wide asset managed by Crime Operations Air Support Unit. Historically these aircraft have been maintained through the establishment of a number of Direct Award Contracts (DACs) approved accordingly within PSNI and DoJ. The direction of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) states that an operator (PSNI) of an aircraft must have a maintenance agreement in place with suitability licensed contractors to provide continuing airworthiness and the respective maintenance services, without these formal arrangements in place the aircraft would have to be grounded. The contractor is the original and sole equipment manufacturer of the PSNI aircraft types; the design is their Intellectual Property and shall not be delegated or licensed to a 3rd party. The contractor is the Type Certificate Holder for the core aircraft design and it is responsible for defining the aircraft's "build standard, safe operation and maintenance of airworthiness policy". The platform design, qualification data and safety case empowers the contractor to specify the requirements and mandate modifications for all components (includes specialist role equipment) fitted to the core aircraft and mission systems. The contractor is an CAA approved continuing airworthiness management organisation and a BCAR A8-23 authorised helicopter maintenance organisation. They have intellectual proprietary rights to the equipment fitted on the aircraft. The aircraft is used for national security type specific duties and is fitted with specialist survelliance equipment. They have the unique competency to manage mature, high flying rate fleets as the OEM and they are the sole source for providing a single integrated solution, they offer an integrated logistics support utilising their supply chain, access to national stock levels and availability of all specialist tooling. They have existing infrastructure in place for the delivery of this service and have unique knowledge and experience in working with PSNI and their specific operational needs since aircraft entry into service. The provision of this complete maintenance service ensures that the aircraft are maintained to the highest standards ensuring officer safety in their respective operational deployment. The value of this DAC is above the threshold and therefore the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 (as amended) apply. There are derogations under the regulations to award a contract to a single supplier where the supplies or services can only be supplied by a particular supplier for any of the following reasons:- i)Where competition is absent for technical reasons (regulation 32(2)(b)(ii); or ii)For reasons connected with the protection of exclusive rights, including intellectual property rights (reg32(2)(b) iii) but only where no reasonable alternative or substitute exists and the absence of competition is not the result of an artificial narrowing down of the parameters of the procurement.