Defence Procurement Agency

The Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) has a simple mission - 'to equip the Armed Forces' - and it has an annual budget of £6 billion split between 1,000-plus projects including Typhoon, Skynet and the future carrier. Its vision is 'to excel in delivering equipment to the Armed Forces by meeting our promises to our customers and developing the excellence of our people'. As well as procuring new equipment, it also provides other procurement-related services.
Based at Abbey Wood in north Bristol (where the vast majority of its employees work), the DPA was launched on 1 April 1999 as an executive agency of the MoD, replacing the Procurement Executive. Its objectives are to:
• buy weapons systems and platforms, and manage major upgrades
• deliver projects within defined performance, time and cost bands
• provide certain procurement-related services, guidance and standards
• participate in the UK's military nuclear programmes.
The DPA is the single biggest purchaser of manufactured goods in the UK. At any one time, its 4,300 staff manages more than 13,000 contracts, ranging from the purchase of submarines to small parts for a field radio. For the financial year 2001/2002 the DPA spent about £9.7 billion acquiring defence equipment. New equipment that entered service during the year included the Hercules C130J transport aircraft, the Apache Attack Helicopter and the Merlin HC Mark 3 Support helicopter.
Approximately 14 per cent of its staff are military, the rest are civilian, and it employs over 1800 engineers and scientists. It manages around 60 projects with individual values over £400 million, of which the biggest is Typhoon. There is a total of over 70 project teams managing around 1,000 projects, some working on joint projects in industry premises.
These figures highlight three important issues:
• as a large-scale public-sector purchaser of goods and services, the MoD has a duty to apply best acquisition practice to achieve best value for money for the taxpayer
• this scale of acquisition can have a huge economic impact; defence expenditure accounts for approximately 2.5 per cent of Gross Domestic Product, with 170,000 jobs in the United Kingdom depending directly or indirectly on domestic defence equipment expenditure
• because of the scale of its acquisition programme the MoD is a major customer for industry, so its decisions can have a major effect; in some areas the MoD is effectively the sole purchaser of particular goods or services, which can have a significant effect on local economies.
Recent years have witnessed significant changes in the way MoD acquires goods and services. In particular, new initiatives like 'smart' acquisition entail a more dynamic relationship between the MoD and its external suppliers in industry.
The DPA is just over three years old, and its mantra is 'to deliver equipment to the Armed Forces faster, cheaper and better'. It intends to deliver 95 per cent of its 'smart' projects within the agreed performance, time and cost by 2005. In the longer term this will increase to 95 per cent of all projects. To achieve this it intends to concentrate on core values of:
• excellence - performance-driven, seeking continuous improvement, measured against achieving the results customers want
• meeting promises to customers - focused on understanding and meeting customer needs
• valuing its people - developing potential, recognising needs, supporting aspirations and rewarding achievements
• integrity - underlying everything with integrity, honesty and transparency within its team and with customers and suppliers.
This will enable it to address three key strategic themes:
• using leading-edge procurement techniques
• satisfying its customers
• achieving interoperability with the Defence Logistics Organisation.
The aim of defence procurement is to buy equipment for the Armed Forces that meets their requirements and timescales, while achieving the best value for money for taxpayers. Competition is fundamental and used wherever possible, choosing the bid that provides best overall value for money. The entire life of a piece of equipment is considered, because support costs can far exceed purchase price.
Where competition is either not possible or sensible, MoD policy is 'No Acceptable Price - No Contract', ensuring prices are fully agreed before a contract is let. Some payments may be retained until the equipment shows it has met the specification after being in service for some time. The DPA's strategy is to achieve its objectives through Integrated Project Teams (IPTs), supported by other Agency staff providing expertise in areas like technology, commercial relationships, finance and personnel.
Because of the nature of its work, most employees are involved in liaison with industry, acting as intelligent customers to ensure that programmes deliver what is required. The DPA recruits through internal promotion first. For mobile grades (the majority) it then advertises nationally and locally, and through the Regular Forces Employment Agency. Non-mobile grades are posted in JobCentres. All vacancies are posted on the web at www.jobs.mod.uk.