Guidance

Competition Document: Remote Monitoring of Sensitive Sites

Updated 21 April 2022

1. Introduction:

The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA), on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), is seeking proposals for innovative, next-generation technologies that will underpin the remote monitoring of sensitive sites by enhancing and improving upon existing methods. Some of the intended benefits of such technologies are the reduction of operatives from exposure to higher risk, difficult or time consuming activities and the ability to take decisions based upon data gathered in line with NDA published Grand Challenges for Technical Innovation. Projects awarded under the competition will develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a remote sensing solution, service and/or system(s) across the NDA Group estate.

Up to £750k (excl. VAT) is available to fund multiple proposals in this Phase 1 competition. The NDA is expecting a broad range of proposals covering all 3 themes listed, below with values not exceeding £75k (excl. VAT) per proposal. All projects must complete by the end of May 2023.

There is potential for this Phase 1 competition to be followed by a second phase competition. Phase 2 would invite proposals to further develop the Remote Sensing solution, service and/or system(s) proposed to meet NDA Group use cases and potentially those of wider Government. These would be either as standalone projects or through combined projects requiring collaboration with others.

Should the competition progress to Phase 2, it is anticipated that a working prototype solution, service and/or system(s) will be demonstrated to NDA Group and other key government stakeholders at the end of the Phase 2 project.

Any further phases will be open to applications from all innovators and not just those that submitted successful bids in Phase 1.

2. Competition Scope and Challenge

2.1 Background: The need for monitoring

The NDA’s mission is to deliver safe, secure, sustainable, and publicly acceptable solutions to the challenge of nuclear clean-up and waste management. The NDA estate covers 17 Nuclear sites across the UK, widely distributed geographically and is made up of over 1000 Hectares of designated land on which over 800 buildings are located. The ongoing monitoring and inspection of estate facilities across the UK is a substantial and resource intensive task. It requires safe and secure working practices to be undertaken at all stages of the process. The wider NDA Group Operating Companies are tasked with the day-to-day operation and management of this built infrastructure and land - which they are responsible for under a licencing regime, overseen by various Government Regulators. There is a legal requirement to monitor and inspect these areas to ensure safe, secure, and environmentally responsible operations as well as a collective duty to help inform and improve the continued decommissioning effort across the UK cost effectively for the UK tax payer now and in the future.

The NDA Group comprises a number of operating companies (sometimes) also referred to as Site Licence Companies (SLCs). These include Sellafield Ltd, Magnox Ltd, Dounreay Site Restoration Ltd, Nuclear Waste Services and Nuclear Transport Solutions. Further details on the NDA estate can be found here.

In support of the Grand Challenges for Technical Innovation and the drive to reduce nuclear decommissioning costs, the NDA wants to achieve a step change improvement in our ability to undertake predictive modelling and proactively improve its decision-making capability through enhanced data capture and intelligent analysis. Additionally, as part of the UK’s commitment to a green recovery, the NDA is also committed to reporting its environmental performance and meeting wider Government policy commitments.

2.2 Competition Scope and challenge

The Defence and Security Accelerator, on behalf of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, is seeking proposals for innovative, next-generation technologies and solutions to underpin the remote monitoring of sensitive sites by enhancing and improving upon existing methods. The intended benefits of such technologies are the reduction of operatives’ from exposure to higher risk, difficult or time consuming activities. Projects awarded under the competition will develop and demonstrate the feasibility of a remote sensing solution, service and/or system(s) across the NDA Group estate.

This competition is looking for proposals that address 1 or more of the following 3 challenge areas which will enable the NDA to collect data without touching the elements being monitored, with reduced physical presence of human beings and generate outputs that can be easily consumed and interpreted by the end user. Further details of these competition areas are in Section 3.

The NDA is seeking innovative proposals in 3 challenge areas:

• Challenge 1: built environment and infrastructure
• Challenge 2: land use
• Challenge 3: security and resilience

These proposed solutions, services and/or system(s) will:

• inform
• improve decision-making
• enhance understanding of operational environments (across the UK)
• enable and/or improve predictive modelling
• be accessible to non-specialist users

This is likely to be achieved through:

• data planning
• data capture
• data integration
• data analysis
• data visualisation

Details on existing methods can be found in Section 3.

The NDA is open to, and encourages novel approaches which provide the end user with actionable information from the remote sensing environment. The NDA does not have a stated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) for proposals submitted under this competition. However, as a minimum, solutions, systems and services/service concepts are expected to be sufficiently mature, and ideally demonstrable as a proof of concept (TRL3) or have carried out basic validation in a laboratory environment (TRL4) at the end of Phase 1.

Submissions should articulate how the proposal could be developed and feasibly deployed across the NDA Group in one or more of the challenge areas. Phase 1 submissions must be able to demonstrate the technical feasibility of their solutions, systems and services/service concepts capability, following contract award.

Submissions for Phase 1 should identify how existing systems/solutions/services could be modified or new systems/solutions/services could be developed in the future to meet NDA Group challenge areas (detailed in Section 3).

When considering the challenge areas, consideration should be given to:

• the volume of data provided
• the temporal frequency of data capture
• the required scalability of data captured
• relative age of the data in relation to the challenge area
• the resolution of the data
• the cost of the data captured
• the types of data
• the data format
• security of the system(s)
• the ability for data to be stored, accessed, visualised, and interrogated
• how data analysis can be automated or made more efficient
• how the data can be reported and easily consumed by non-specialist users
• how the data/reports are transmitted and consumed by other systems in a secure manner

We welcome proposals from across the full range of innovators, including academia, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and large companies, from both the UK and overseas. We also welcome proposals that bring together the strength of different industrial sectors and/or academic partners. For proposals, there must be a lead supplier who submits the proposal. The other suppliers within the consortium need to be listed as subcontractors.

We encourage collaboration between organisations for this competition. To support this, we have a short survey to collect details of those who wish to explore collaboration possibilities. Please see Section 9.1 for further information.

The competition is open to innovators from the existing Defence and Security sectors and nuclear sectors as well as those who have not traditionally worked in either domain. Previous experience of Defence and Security and nuclear work is not a requirement. We particularly welcome interest from applicants from space, oil and gas and utilities sectors.

3. Competition Challenges:

3. 1 Challenge 1: built environment and infrastructure

We are interested in the detection, identification, and monitoring high-value physical assets, including equipment and civil structures on nuclear licenced sites. Assets of interest include building rooftops, pipelines, plant, equipment and industrial facilities. An ability to undertake automated change detection, remote inspection, and condition monitoring of external assets is of particular interest.

Currently, on average, general roof inspections are undertaken every 6 to 12 months. The opportunity to inspect more frequently (to identify issues earlier) and on demand (for example, post weather event for damage assessment) would be beneficial. Inspections are predominantly undertaken manually, which involves erecting scaffolds and working at height. As there are safety risks and associated operational constraints using this method on our sites, in the last few years other methods, including use of drones, have been trialled and now form part of the asset inspection regime for historically hard to reach areas. We are currently developing our GIS capability, although our ability to integrate data across the whole NDA group is currently limited. For information on existing utilised software, please see the company website.

Historically, we have been interested in the following indicators:

• changes in colour
• water collecting
• physical anomalies i.e. crack, texture change
• organic growths.
• thermal changes over time

We are also interested in novel, additional or indirect indicators which improve our understanding of the assets condition and the feasibility of deploying the capability across multiple sites, applying a level of standardisation, scalability across the NDA estate, whilst significantly enhancing existing data gathering, modelling and planning capabilities compared to current market offerings. We are keen to understand how technologies such as Artificial Intelligence could be deployed as part of the system/service to help us understand how to better target asset inspection.

3.2 Challenge 2: environmental monitoring and land use

We are interested in innovative solutions which enable users to remotely monitor, manage and enable us to effectively report on the use of our land and environmental aspects of the NDA estate.

This may include, but is not limited to:

• early warning of water effects (hydrology) e.g. groundwater flow models, transmissive land / groundwater pathways
• monitoring air quality
• change in vegetation around a site
• monitoring site/non-site interface e.g. traffic surveys
• environmental impact on and around sites e.g. coastal erosion, monitoring a subsea wellhead and borehole on the seabed
• effective records management for site planning and longer-term strategic planning
• natural capital assessment
• solid waste accumulation
• construction build monitoring

Systems currently in use involve monitoring physical sensors at a variety of locations on a site by site basis. The current process of data capture is generally manual and does not allow for the easy aggregation of data or the integration and analysis of differing data types, which is labour intensive and hinders efficient and timely reporting. We are interested in the feasibility of deploying new or improved methods across multiple sites, applying a level of standardisation within the NDA estate, whilst enhancing existing modelling and planning capabilities to ensure that we can meet the increasing demand for environmental data and analysis.

This aligns with Government policy to meet a growing need for data transparency on environmental matters when engaging with the public whilst also informing our future strategy and enabling a more agile response to requests for information.

3.3 Challenge 3: security and resilience

We are interested in innovative ways to ensure our sites remain safe and secure in a resource constrained environment and delivering proportionate security in line with the site risk reduction curve during the decommissioning process. Currently, NDA sites have high-level security measures in place designed to protect nuclear material (NM) and Other Radiological Material (ORM).

Current measures include but are not limited to:

• Armed Police (Civil Nuclear Constabulary [CNC]) and/or Civilian Guard Forces (site and risk dependent)
• Security fences, enhanced lighting, CCTV and associated systems
• Perimeter Intrusion Detection Systems (PIDS)
• Access Control systems

These capabilities are diverse throughout the NDA Group, and are in line with associated risks. As the NDAs decommissioning mission evolves these, we are seeking more appropriate, efficient and/or cost-effective solutions for our future security needs.

We are interested in innovative capabilities that enable:

• perimeter monitoring of sensitive sites remotely and/or from an autonomous vantage
• resilient and real time, hazard, risk and threat identification
• autonomous interdiction capability (The action of intercepting and preventing the movement of a prohibited commodity or person)
• intelligence-based alerting system

We are looking for proposals which reduce operational costs, use modern and resilient technologies and augment security professionals by the intelligent use of emergent technologies i.e. Artificial Intelligence (AI).

4. Clarification of what we want:

We want novel ideas to benefit end-users working in Nuclear decommissioning. Your proposal should include evidence of:

• the feasibility of how the system, solution or service concept will meet at least one of the defined challenge areas as part of Phase 1, with an outline high-level plan of how the proposal could be taken forward to form an integrated remote sensing system, solution or near operational service (Phase 2) to meet a NDA Group need.
• Recognising that organisations with specific capabilities may only be able to provide component/part of a system, solution or a service, we welcome and are open to the supply chain forming consortia in Phase 1 (or later in Phase 2) to develop a more complete remote sensing system, solution or service. To facilitate this, we have a short survey(https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/preview/CA8VVN/E02AB6A601D8650D2D656495FACCAC) (as detailed in Section 9.1 to collect details of those who wish to explore collaboration possibilities. If you are interested in a collaboration, please complete the survey and your details will be shared with other potential suppliers who have completed the survey and are interested in collaborating.

Proposals will be assessed against their ability to meet the challenges above, but we will also consider the proposed solution for its potential to be integrated into our existing systems to form a complete remote sensing solution for the NDA Group in future phases in the event of proposals offering similar capabilities.

The NDA would like to fund projects in each of the 3 themes. However, as some systems/solutions/ services may be cross cutting, we reserve the right to allocate funding to best meet the needs of our end users. We welcome both significant enhancements to traditional and also novel systems/solutions/services concepts that will benefit users working in the NDA Group. These solutions must demonstrate their potential to enhance how the NDA Group manages its sites and deliver wider benefits.

Your proposal should outline the:

• proof of concept with a clear, costed outline plan to produce a demonstrable solution/service that enables an operator to interface with the remote sensing environment from multiple locations enabling dashboard modification/customisation
• clear demonstration of how the proposed work applies to the NDA Group context and specific challenge area(s) detailed in Section 3.
• theoretical development, method of advancement or proof of concept research which can demonstrate potential for translation to practical demonstration in later phases
• innovation or a creative approach
• clear demonstration of how the proposed work applies to nuclear decommissioning challenges and wider application to defence and security sector challenges.

4.1 Clarification of what we don’t want

For this competition we are not interested in proposals that:

• constitute consultancy, paper-based studies or literature reviews which just summarise the existing literature without any view of future innovation
• solutions which do not consider the capacity for integration of the data or system with existing capability, see Section 3
• solutions which deviate from the remote monitoring challenge areas
• are an identical resubmission of a previous bid to DASA or MOD without modification
• offer demonstrations of off-the-shelf products requiring no experimental development (unless applied in a novel way to the challenge)
• offer no real long-term prospect of integration
• offer no real prospect of out-competing existing technological solutions
• cannot demonstrate feasibility within the timescale of the phase of the competition
• Are completely unproven ideas / concepts (i.e. TRL1)
• Are for the procurement of standard pieces of equipment from a commercial supplier or third party distributor

5. Accelerating and exploiting your innovation

It is important that over the lifetime of DASA competitions, ideas are matured and accelerated towards appropriate end users to enhance capability. How long this takes will be dependent on the nature and starting point of the innovation. Early identification and appropriate engagement with potential end users during the competition and subsequent phases are essential in order to develop and implement an exploitation plan.

All proposals to DASA should articulate the expected development in technology maturity of the potential solution over the lifetime of the contract and how this relates to improved operational capability against the current known (or presumed) baseline. Your deliverables should be designed to evidence these aspects with the aim of making it as easy as possible for potential collaborators/stakeholders to identify the innovative elements of your proposal in order to consider routes for exploitation.

5.1 How to outline your exploitation plan

Include the following information to help the assessors understand your exploitation plans to date:

• the intended users of your final product and whether you have previously engaged with them, their procurement arm or their research and development arm
• awareness of, and alignment to, any existing end user procurement programmes
• the anticipated benefits (for example, in cost, time, improved capability) that your system will provide to the user
• whether it is likely to be a standalone product or integrated with other technologies or platforms
• expected additional work required beyond the end of the contract to develop an operationally deployable commercial product (for example, “scaling up” for manufacture, cyber security, integration with existing technologies, environmental operating conditions)
• additional future applications and wider markets for exploitation
• wider collaborations and networks you have already developed or any additional relationships you see as a requirement to support exploitation
• how your product could be tested in a representative environment in later phases
• any specific legal, ethical, commercial or regulatory considerations for exploitation

5.2 Is your exploitation plan long term?

Long term studies may not be able to articulate exploitation in great detail, but it should be clear that there is credible advantage to be gained from the technology development. Include project specific information which will help exploitation. This competition is being carried out as part of a wider MOD programme and with cognisance of cross-Government initiatives.

6. How to apply

6.1 Submission deadline

Midday on 18 May 2022

6.2 Where do I submit my proposal?

Via the DASA Online Submission Service for which you will be required to register.

Only proposals submitted through the DASA Online Submission Service will be accepted.

6.3 Total funding available

£750K (excl. VAT) is available to fund multiple proposals in this Phase 1 competition. The NDA is expecting a broad range of proposals across all 3 challenges (noting some proposals may cover multiple challenge areas in a single submission), with values not exceeding £75k (excl. VAT) per proposal. All projects must complete by the end of May 2023.

There is the potential for this Phase 1 competition to be followed by a second phase competition. Phase 2 would invite proposals to further develop the Remote Sensing Systems proposed to meet NDA Group use cases and those of wider Government. These would be either as standalone projects or through combined projects requiring collaboration with others.

Should the competition progress to Phase 2, it is anticipated that a working prototype system/service will be demonstrated to NDA Group and other key government stakeholders at the end of the project. Any further phases will be open to applications from all innovators and not just those that submitted successful bids in Phase 1.

6.4 For further guidance

Click here for more information on our competition process and how your proposal is assessed.

Queries should be sent to the DASA Help Centre – accelerator@dstl.gov.uk.

7. What your proposal must include

• the proposal should focus on the Phase 1 requirements but must also include a brief (uncosted) outline of the next stages of work required for exploitation
• when submitting a proposal, you must complete all sections of the online form, including an appropriate level of technical information to allow assessment of the bid and a completed finances section
• completed proposals must comply with the financial rules set for this competition. The upper-limit for this competition is £75K (excl. VAT) per proposal. Proposals will be rejected if the financial cost exceeds this capped level
• you must include a list of other current or recent government funding you may have received in this area if appropriate, making it clear how this proposal differs from this work
• a project plan with clear milestones and deliverables must be provided. Deliverables must be well defined and designed to provide evidence of progress against the project plan and the end-point for this phase; they must include a final report
• you should also plan for attendance at a kick-off meeting at the start of Phase 1, a mid-project event and an end of project event at the end of Phase 1, as well as regular reviews with the appointed Technical Partner and Project Manager; all meetings will be in the UK. Meetings may also take place virtually.
• The suppliers are expected to attend and demonstrate their project at an NDA event held in the UK, expected to be held in June 2023.
• your proposal must demonstrate how you will complete all activities/services and provide all deliverables within the competition timescales (9 months). Proposals with any deliverables (including final report) outside the competition timeline will be rejected as non-compliant.

7.1 What your resourcing plan should include

Your resourcing plan must identify, where possible, the nationalities of proposed employees that you intend to work on this phase.

7.2 If your proposal is recommended for funding

In the event of a proposal being recommended for funding, the DASA reserves the right to undertake due diligence checks including the clearance of proposed employees. Please note that this process will take as long as necessary and could take up to 6 weeks in some cases for non-UK nationals.

You must identify any ethical / legal / regulatory factors within your proposal and how the associated risks will be managed, including break points in the project if approvals are not received.

MODREC approvals can take up to 5 months therefore you should plan your work programme accordingly. If you are unsure if your proposal will need to apply for MODREC approval, then please refer to the MODREC Guidance for Suppliers or contact your Innovation Partner for further guidance.

Requirements for access to Government Furnished Assets (GFA), for example, information, equipment, materials and facilities, may be included in your proposal. DASA cannot guarantee that GFA will be available. If you apply for GFA, you should include an alternative plan in case it is not available.

Failure to provide any of the above listed will automatically render your proposal non-compliant.

7.3 Export control for overseas partners

All relevant export control regulations will apply if a company ultimately wants to sell a developed system to a foreign entity. All innovators must ensure that they can obtain, if required, the necessary export licences for their proposals and developments, such that they can be supplied to the UK and other countries. If you cannot confirm that you can gain the requisite licences, your proposal will be sifted out of the competition.

Additionally, if we believe that you will not be able to obtain export clearance, additional checks may be conducted, which may also result in your proposal being sifted out of the competition.

7.4 Cyber risk assessment

Supplier Assurance Questionnaire (SAQ)

Innovators must complete a Supplier Assurance Questionnaire (SAQ), using the DASA Risk Assessment Reference (RAR) for this competition: RAR- 941412760 and answer questions for risk level “Very Low”.

DASA has completed a Cyber Risk Assessment (CRA) for this competition. In order to submit to this competition innovators are required to work towards cyber resilience. If selected for funding, the innovator must prove cyber resilience before a contract will be awarded.

Defence Cyber Protection Partnership

The Defence Cyber Protection Partnership (DCPP) will review your SAQ submission and respond with a reference number within 2 working days. The completed SAQ form and resulting email response from DCPP must be downloaded and included within the DASA submission service portal when the proposal is submitted. Please allow enough time to receive the SAQ reference number prior to competition close at midday on 18 May 2022 If the proposal is being funded, the SAQ will be evaluated against the CRA for the competition, and it will be put it into one of the following categories:

1. compliant – no further action
2. not compliant – if successful in competition and being funded, the innovator will be required to complete a Cyber Implementation Plan (CIP) before the contract is placed, which will need to be reviewed and agreed with the relevant project manager

Innovators can enter a proposal without all controls in place, but are expected to have all the cyber protection measures necessary to fulfil the requirements of the contract in place at the time of contract award, or have an agreed Cyber Implementation Plan (CIP).

The CIP provides evidence as to how and when potential innovators will achieve compliance. Provided the measures proposed in the Cyber Implementation Plan do not pose an unacceptable risk to the MOD, a submission with a Cyber Implementation Plan will be considered alongside those who can achieve the controls.

A final check will be made to ensure cyber resilience before the contract is placed. Commercial staff cannot progress without it. This process does not replace any contract specific security requirements.

Further guidance for completing this process can be requested by emailing the DASA Help Centre: accelerator@dstl.gov.uk.

Additional information about cyber security can be found at: DCPP: Cyber Security Model industry buyer and supplier guide.

7.5 Public facing information

When submitting your proposal, you will be required to include a title and a short abstract. The title and abstract you provide will be used by DASA, NDA and potentially other government departments, to describe your project and its intended outcomes and benefits. They may be included at DASA and NDA Group events in relation to this competition and in documentation such as brochures. The proposal title will be published in the DASA transparency data on GOV.UK, along with your company name, the amount of funding, and the start and end dates of your contract. As this information can be shared, it should not contain information that may compromise Intellectual property.

7.6 How your proposal will be assessed

At Stage 1, all proposals will be checked for compliance with the competition document and may be rejected before full assessment if they do not comply. Only those proposals that demonstrate compliance against the competition scope and DASA mandatory criteria will be taken forward to full assessment.

Mandatory Criteria
The proposal outlines how it meets the scope of the competition.	Within scope (Pass) / Out of scope (Fail)
The proposal fully explains in all three sections of the DASA submission service how it meets the DASA criteria.	Pass / Fail
The proposal clearly details a financial plan, a project plan and a resourcing plan to complete the work proposed in Phase 1.	Pass / Fail
The proposal contains a credible test plan where appropriate.	Pass / Fail
The proposal identifies there is no need (or not) for MODREC approval.	Pass / Fail
The proposal identifies any GFA required for Phase 1	Pass / Fail
Maximum value of proposal is £75k (excl. VAT).	Pass / Fail
The proposal demonstrates how all research and development activities/services (including delivery of the final report) will be completed within 9 months from award of contract (or less).	Pass / Fail
The innovator provides unqualified acceptance of the terms and conditions of the contract.	Pass / Fail
The bidder has done all of the following: submitted a Supplier Assurance Questionnaire (SAQ) number; attached the email from DCPP; attached the submitted SAQ form– See section 7.4 above.	Pass / Fail

Proposals that pass Stage 1 will then be assessed against the standard DASA assessment criteria (Desirability, Feasibility and Viability) by subject matter experts from the NDA and NDA Group (using appropriate confidentiality agreements) the MOD (including Dstl), other government departments and the front-line military commands. You will not have the opportunity to view or comment on assessors’ recommendations.

DASA reserves the right to disclose on a confidential basis any information it receives from innovators during the procurement process (including information identified by the innovator as Commercially Sensitive Information in accordance with the provisions of this competition) to any third party engaged by DASA for the specific purpose of evaluating or assisting DASA in the evaluation of the innovator’s proposal. In providing such information the innovator consents to such disclosure. Appropriate confidentiality agreements will be put in place.

Further guidance on how your proposal is assessed is available on the DASA website.

After assessment, proposals will be discussed internally at a Decision Conference where, based on the assessments, budget and wider strategic considerations, a decision will be made on the proposals that are recommended for funding.

The NDA is ideally looking to fund a range of projects across all 3 challenge areas, however, reserves the right to distribute funding based upon quality and end user feedback.

Innovators are not permitted to attend the Decision Conference.

Proposals that are unsuccessful will receive brief feedback after the Decision Conference. At Stage 1, all proposals will be checked for compliance with the competition document and may be rejected before full assessment if they do not comply. Only those proposals that demonstrate compliance against the competition scope and DASA mandatory criteria will be taken forward to full assessment.

7.8 Things you should know about DASA contracts: DASA terms and conditions

Please read the DASA terms and conditions which contain important information for innovators. For this competition we will be using a modified Innovation Standard Contract (ISC) Terms and Schedules due to the funding by the NDA and the rights that shall be secured on behalf of NDA using the NDA/DASA IP condition. We will require unqualified acceptance of the terms and conditions; if applicable, please ensure your commercial department has provided their acceptance.

Funded projects will be allocated a Project Manager and a Technical Partner (as a technical point of contact). In addition, the DASA team will work with you to support delivery and exploitation including, when appropriate, introductions to end users and business support to help develop their business.

We will use deliverables from DASA contracts in accordance with our rights detailed in the contract terms and conditions.

For this competition, £750k is currently available to fund proposals. There may be occasions when additional funding may become available to allow us to revisit proposals deemed suitable for funding. Therefore, DASA reserves the right to keep such proposals in reserve. In the event that additional funding becomes available, DASA may ask whether you would still be prepared to undertake the work outlined in your proposal under the same terms.

8. Phase 1 key dates

Dial-in	31st March 2022
Pre bookable 1-1 telecom sessions	5th April 2022 - Fully Booked
Pre bookable 1-1 telecom sessions	6th April 2022 - Fully Booked
Pre bookable 1-1 telecom sessions	13th April 2022
Competition closes	12 noon; 18th May 2022
Feedback release	15th July 2022
Contracting	Aim to start August 2022 with Research to end 9 months later by the end of May 2023 and attendance at Demonstration event in June 2023

9. Supporting events

9.1 Collaboration Survey

We encourage collaboration between organisations for this competition. To support this we have a short survey to collect details of those who wish to explore collaboration possibilities. If you are interested in a collaboration, please complete the survey and your details will be circulated among other potential suppliers who have completed the survey and are interested in collaborating.

If you choose to complete the Supplier collaboration survey, please be aware that all of the information you submit in the survey will be provided to other Suppliers who also complete the survey.

9.2 Dial-in session

31 March 2022 – A dial-in session providing further detail on the problem space and a chance to ask questions in an open forum. If you would like to participate, please register on the Eventbrite page.

5 April 2022 – A series of 20 minute one-to-one teleconference sessions, giving you the opportunity to ask specific questions. If you would like to participate, please register on the Eventbrite page. Booking is on a first come first served basis. - Now Fully Booked

6 April 2022 – A series of 20 minute one-to-one teleconference sessions, giving you the opportunity to ask specific questions. If you would like to participate, please register on the Eventbrite page. Booking is on a first come first served basis. -Now Fully Booked

13 April 2022 – A series of 20 minute one-to-one teleconference sessions, giving you the opportunity to ask specific questions. If you would like to participate, please register on the Eventbrite page. Booking is on a first come first served basis.

10. Help: Contact the DASA Help Centre

Competition queries including on process, application, commercial, technical and intellectual property aspects should be sent to the DASA Help Centre at accelerator@dstl.gov.uk, quoting the competition title. If you wish receive future updates on this competition, please email the DASA Help Centre.

While all reasonable efforts will be made to answer queries, DASA reserves the right to impose management controls if volumes of queries restrict fair access of information to all potential innovators.