Major Royal Navy fleet support programme launched at London International Shipping Week

Industry have been briefed on the opportunity to bid for multi-billion pound contracts set to optimise the future management and delivery of engineering support for the Royal Navy’s fleet of Ships and Submarines.

NSIGN (Naval Support Integrated Global Network) Ships, which was launched during London International Shipping Week, will support the Royal Navy’s capabilities, including the new aircraft carriers, and will deliver improved availability, resilience and certainty of delivery as well as Naval Base services from 2028.

The NSIGN Ships & Associated Naval Bases Project, managed by UK MOD’s procurement arm Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S), runs alongside the Submarines & Associated Naval base projects which will be delivered by the Submarine Delivery Agency (SDA).

Having needed to host a second presentation to facilitate the demand for attendance, the NSIGN Senior Programme leads at DE&S, explored the strategy and shared with Industry the four options being worked through (Continue, Enhance, Expand, Transform), each option stepping through greater levels of change, which will lead DE&S to improve the ships engineering enterprise and aims to deliver a paradigm shift in availability to sustain a Global, Modern, Ready Royal Navy.

Collectively DE&S spoke to 100+ Industry guests and helped them to understand their strategy, scope of the project, with timelines and invited industry to participate in the market sounding phase to help us move forward in defining what is needed and how we transition.

Graeme Little OBE, Deputy Director Future Support Acquisition at the Royal Navy, who opened the presentation said: “Today was a bold confident step for NSIGN with the formal launch of the Ships’ Project, we are well-placed to capitalise on this strong start.”

Becks Green, NSIGN Team Lead at DE&S, added: “This is a real opportunity to engage with Industry early to feedback on our approach and ensure the best solution for defence, and I have had great feedback as to what an opportunity this is"

NSIGN Market Sounding Phase continues with an online webinar on Wednesday 27^th September for those unable to attend the Launch at London International Shipping Week, which will cover the introduction to NSIGN, and the Scope and Ambition of the programme for SHIPS.

This will be followed by a Market Sounding Day on Monday 9^th October in London, where DE&S want to build on the successes of the launch event and engage further with industry, testing the feasibility of their requirements and options and also to assess the optimum way to approach the market in future. 

The 9^th October engagement will start this off through workshopping ideas, and gaining further knowledge and understanding to draw into the development and defining the Programme and will lead us to the final stages of the phase, with the release of the Market Sounding Paper (by 27th October) before offering one-to-one sessions with suppliers.

We invite all industry to join us at the next engagement events by emailing:

DESships-NSIGN-ENG-CMRCL(at)mod.gov.uk confirming which event you would like to participate in.