Research and analysis

Annual qualifying defence contract statistics: 2017/18

The SSRO has released its annual publication on key statistics relating to qualifying defence contracts (QDCs) and qualifying sub-contracts (QSCs).

Documents

Annual qualifying defence contract statistics 2017/18

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Accompanying data book

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Details

The annual statistics bulletin is part of a regular published series of statistical reports, containing analysis of key QDC/QSC information. This annual publication includes analysis of all contracts that became a QDC/QSC between 1 April 2017 and 31 March 2018, and includes data for Quarter 4 2017/18 within the quarterly series of bulletins. Data is also presented from 1 April 2015, when contract reports were first submitted.

The SSRO was notified of 152 contracts that became QDCs/QSCs by 31 March 2018. Contractors have one month after the date the contract becomes a QDC to submit reports, and as of 30 April 2018 the SSRO had received contract reports for 141 contracts that became QDCs/QSCs between 1 April 2015 and 31 March 2018, which the analysis is based on. This comprised 117 QDCs and 24 QSCs, across 70 different contracting companies.

The estimated total contract price for contracts that became QDCs/QSCs in 2017/18 was £2.7 billion, and £19.5 billion overall. The average estimated contract profit rate of QDCs/QSCs decreased from 10.62 per cent for QDCs/QSCs in 2016/17 to 8.47 per cent for QDCs/QSCs in 2017/18.

All data is based on the latest submitted report for each QDC/QSC, to reflect the most recently reported contract data, and may not reflect values at contract completion.

The publication schedule for the next four quarterly bulletins is as follows:

Quarterly bulletin Date Published
Q1 2018/19 16 August 2018
Q2 2018/19 November 2018
Q3 2018/19 February 2019
Q4 2018/19 Annual Statistics – June 2019
Published 12 June 2018
Last updated 16 August 2018 + show all updates
  1. Updated ‘Annual qualifying defence contract statistics 2017/18’ to address a minor inconsistency in the overall profit rate figure on page 2.

  2. First published.