The Home Office has issued a Prior Information Notice on behalf of the Joint Maritime Security Centre (JMSC) seeking early supply chain interest in an upcoming £69 million tender for a JMSC Mobile Maritime Domain Awareness Service.

Photo credit MoD: Royal Navy warships and aircraft shadow six Russian vessels in English Channel international shipping lane in February 2025

Maritime security is a key enabler to UK, Crown Dependency and British Overseas Territories security.

The JMSC provides Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) data to UK Government stakeholders to support delivery of security and regulatory enforcement activities. The MDA provision is comprised of multiple layers of data from a variety of sources.

The procurement islooking to enhance the MDA to better support operational services by procuring the provision of a scalable, mobile, digital outcome that is capable of delivering streamed “Tracks as a Service” (TKaaS) in Near Real-time (NRT).

The tracks are required to incorporate Automatic Identification System (AIS) detection, radar and Electro Optical (EO)/Infra-Red (IR) detection – all correlated to enhance non-cooperative vessel detection. A separate portal will be required to be made available by the supplier to view the camera data and provide an alternative display of tracks and any alerts.

The service is to provide maritime tracks from selected areas to JMSC and suppliers will be responsible for owning, siting, installing, securing and operating any hardware in the UK or overseas.

The data stream will be provided to the Royal Navy Maritime Domain Awareness Programme (MDAP) via an Application Planning Interface (API).

This will include data from land based and BeyondVisual Line of Sight sources (BVLOS) operating in the 4 nations of the UK, the Crown Dependencies and BOT, with the flexibility to respond to short notice operational requirements.

The PIN says the current operational tempo assumes a requirement for 24/7/365 service availability - and suppliers will need to ensure the system is supported with sufficient personnel and process to resolve any issues to ensure system availability (between 99.5 – 99.9%).

The supplier solution is required to :

• Respond to JMSC tasking and provide persistent maritime surveillance of an Area of Interest (AOI) within the UK marine area (and UK Overseas/Dependent Territories).
• Provide active surveillance feeds at a minimum of 24 concurrent AOIs around the UK coast delivering tracks as a service.
• Provide services that will enable/assist in the detection of both cooperative and noncooperative-reporting vessels typically within UK Territorial Waters (TTWs). The solution primarily covers the UK, territorial waters.

The solution will also need to provide services as and when BOTs when required - currently 4 BOTs are receiving improved maritime awareness services. The solution will need to respond to any emerging areas of interest both in the UK and BOT, the PIN says.

Potential length of the contract will be 3 to 5 years in total (including any extension periods), with an estimated total value of up to c£69 million if the contract is awarded for 5 years.

The JMSC would like to engage with the market to determine the level of interest, capacity and capability to meet the requirements by inviting interested suppliers to a market engagement event. This will be followed by further market engagement which is likely to take the form of a questionnaire to seek the views of the market.

JMSC may also hold individual meetings with a number of suppliers to explore their responses in more detail.

The PIN is inviting individuals and organisations to express an interest in the market engagement exercise only. To express interest participants must first be registered on the Home Office e-Sourcing Portal. Supplierswho have not yet registered, can register online at https://homeoffice.app.jaggaer.com/web/login.html by following the 'Register Here' link.

A valid DUNS number (as provided by Dun and Bradstreet) is needed in order to register for the organisation which is being registered and who will be entering into a contract if invited to do so.

Once registered on the Home Office e-Sourcing Portal, potential suppliers who believe they are able to offer the required services, are requested to send an expression of interest to the JMSC procurement inbox This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it by 22nd April 2025.

The subject title of the email should read JMSC Mobile Maritime Domain Awareness Service - Expression of Interest, and the email should confirm your organisation's name, one contact name, one e-mail address and one telephone number.

The contact details must be those used to register on the Home Office e-Sourcing Portal on Jaggaer.

Once the above two steps are completed, invitations to the Market Engagement Event will be made available via the portal, subject to parties signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).

The current expected time and date for the Virtual Supplier Engagement Event is 14:00 on 9th May 2025 but this is subject to change.

Click here to access the PIN documentation.