UK4 Notice - DDAITF/008 Computer Vision Capability - Model Arena Comp

Legal basis

Id

2023/54

Scheme

UKPGA

Uri

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2023/54/contents ↗

Procedure

Features

DDAITF/008 falls under the scope of the Procurement Act 2023 and will be run under the Commercial X dynamic market. The MOD plans to run a streamlined two-stage competitive flexible procedure and will have the following components: - Stage 1: Open Competition and Down selection (3 weeks) Prospective Candidates wishing to participate in this opportunity must submit a model for evaluation within the ‘Model Arena’ and be a member of the Commercial X Dynamic Market prior to the commencement of this phase. - This stage is open to all interested suppliers. - Suppliers will be provided with the information needed to submit a model for evaluation against a labelled dataset containing UK military-relevant objects. - Models will be evaluated consistently through the Model Arena, with suppliers ranked using a consistent technical score. - At the end of Stage 1, MOD will conduct a ‘Down Select’ of the ‘highest performing suppliers – expected to be between 5 and 8 – who will be invited to progress to Stage 2. The aim is simple: identify which solutions perform best against a relevant Defence use case before moving into a more collaborative development activity Assessment at this stage will be 100% Technical, with a Qualification envelope (including security requirements for stage 2 onwards) in addition across the following areas: 1. Reliability. This considers how well the application performs under normal operating conditions. 2. Robustness. This considers how well the application continues to perform when faced with edge-case conditions. 3. Latency. This considers how efficiently the application processes inputs and returns outputs. - Stage 2: Exercise-Aligned Hackathon (2 weeks) Candidates successful at Stage 1 will be invited to the next Stage in the procurement process. Stage 2 will be a more detailed, focussed, assessment of Suppliers' capabilities. Stage 2 will include: - 1 x Social Value (Scored) - 1 x Commercial Envelope (Scored) - 1 x Technical Envelope (Scored) o Phase 2 will run alongside UK-based military exercise activity. o Rather than simply submitting another model, down selected suppliers will be invited to work in a more collaborative, hackathon-style environment. o Suppliers will receive access to a more representative dataset configured around the exercise and will be asked to train, tune, and improve their model over the course of the activity. o Models will be evaluated against an established baseline, with feedback from the exercise used to help suppliers iterate their solutions. o This phase will assess both what the model can do and how the supplier works. Technical evaluation will consider: a. Model performance against the baseline; b. Ability to improve performance through iteration; c. Responsiveness to exercise and user feedback; d. Approach to collaboration and co-creation; and e. Overall suitability for continued development against the use case - Stage 3: Award (Dates TBC) Following the outcome of the competition, the MOD may seek to award a contract, or contracts, to the successful supplier or suppliers through the appropriate contracting route. Under that route, the supplier or suppliers would work collaboratively with Defence to spiral and incrementally evolve the trained model towards operational use cases through spiral development. This would involve iterative model development informed by the evolving context of the use cases, improved and increasingly representative datasets, and expert user feedback. It is expected that completing this phase to the desired standard will result in a continued engagement into FY 27/28 to further develop and refine the model, however this will be subject to contract and no commitment will be made at this stage. Please note the MOD reserves the right not to award following to outcome of this competition.

Special regime

Submission terms

Electronic Submission Policy

notAllowed

Expected award period

Ends

4 Jan 2027, 23:59