The Ministry of Defence intends to award OSI Maritime Systems a two-year contract worth £15 million including VAT to design, build, install and assure replacement interface units connecting the Royal Navy’s electronic chart system to its combat systems, placing the work directly on the grounds that no other company could do it, the department stated in a transparency notice.
The notice, identifier 2026/S 000-091457, was published on 28 September by the National Armaments Director Group and gives a value of £12.5 million excluding VAT. The earliest date the contract can be signed is 15 March 2027, with estimated dates running from 1 April 2027 to 31 March 2029.
What is being bought is the plumbing rather than the system itself. The Warship Electronic Chart Display and Information System, known as WECDIS, is the digital charting and navigation system fitted to warships, and the two units covered here connect it to the wider systems aboard. Both have to work with an upgraded WECDIS already being procured from the same company under a separate transparency notice published in November last year.
According to the department, the interfaces also have to integrate with the Electronic Chart Precise Integrated Navigation System and the Warship Automatic Identification System already installed across the affected platforms, all of which are supplied, supported and assured by OSI. Only that company holds the intellectual property rights, technical drawings, design knowledge, safety assurance evidence and specialist expertise needed to produce replacements compatible with the existing architecture, the notice states, and there are no reasonable alternatives.
The company currently supplying the interface units was approached about continuing, and according to the notice, the equipment support package it offered, which included an update to the interface components, did not represent value for money and would not have delivered the obsolescence recovery the department needs, so it will not be taken forward, and the notice does not name that supplier.
The award is being made under Section 41 of the Procurement Act 2023, relying on the justification at paragraph 6 of Schedule 5 covering a single supplier for technical reasons, and the notice is published under the defence and security special regime. The department states that it assessed alternative procurement approaches before settling on this route and concluded that OSI was the only viable supplier able to meet its technical, operational, interoperability and safety requirements.
OSI Maritime Systems is a Canadian company based at Burnaby in British Columbia, and is recorded in the notice as not being a small or medium-sized enterprise. Its navigation systems are in service with a considerable number of NATO and allied navies, and the company has supplied the Royal Navy’s electronic charting for years, which is the reason the technical case for going direct reads as it does.
Transparency notices of this type are published before a direct award is made rather than after, so that the market can see both the intention and the reasoning while there is still time to raise concerns. The notice records that a conflicts assessment has been prepared, flags the requirement as particularly suitable for voluntary, community and social enterprises, and lists the supplier as not being one.
