Sollerta News

January 2011: Sollerta advises UK Prime Minister's Office on Procurement

The Prime minister's Office at No 10 Downing Street is seeking the views of small businesses on problems with Government Procurement. In particular, what are their nightmares? Digby Barker has offered a Sollerta view.

1. Contracting Authorities need to provide contact details of the companies who have expressed interest in a contract opportunity. The lack of such information is a barrier to SMEs’ ability to form consortia and to bid for sub-contract work as they have no way of knowing which potential Prime Contractors to approach.

The information needs to be provided as soon as possible during a procurement procedure (i.e. prior to issuing PQQs/selecting those to be invited to tender) as it takes time to form alliances and for SMEs to convince potential Primes of their capabilities.

Failure to provide the information promptly also limits the Public Sector’s ability to get best Value for Money, especially through innovation, by limiting competition from consortia of SMEs and because the Primes will tend to use their existing sub-contractors unless they are aware of and have time to consider new and potentially better candidates.

Furthermore, undertaking sub-contract work is itself a very good way for SMEs to accumulate Public Sector experience and hence credibility as suppliers in their own right.

2. At present Contracting Authorities generally refuse to provide this information on the grounds that it is ‘Commercial in Confidence’. While I doubt the Information Commissioner would uphold this view, and in any case OGC guidance is that Contracting Authorities should avoid entering into Confidentiality Agreements, a simple statement in the Contract Notice/Advert to the effect that the contact details of applicants will be released would be sufficient to pave the way for this anyway. I imagine that the most efficient way to implement this would be for the contact details of applicants to be shown on the relevant central procurement portal as they are received.

November 2010: Sollerta offers new skills in Healthcare Consultancy

Lesley Fudge has recently teamed up with Sollerta to give the company new skills in healthcare consultancy.

Lesley qualified as a registered nurse, and during a varied clinical career with the NHS became Theatre Manager at an NHS Trust. She made a career move into clinical procurement and in her final 3 years with the NHS, until she left in 2003, she was head of clinical purchasing for 3 NHS Trusts.

Lesley has authored a book chapter on "working in war and major disasters", having worked during the war in Sarajevo, Bosnia - Herzegovina , and has published widely in perioperative journals. Lesley has an honours Bachelor's degree in art and philosophy and a Master of Science degree in biomedical ethics and health care law.

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October 2010: SECURITY TRADE FAIR AND SYMPOSIUM AT ESSEN

This took place between 4th - 7th October and was a very large show with 12 exhibition halls. The Security Innovation Symposium was a separate event on 5th and the 6th October and involved delegates from all EU member states and many from outside the EU. There were plenary sessions in the morning and various parallel sessions were set up in the afternoons. The second day was largely devoted to the FP7 process - how to bid for project funds. vdconsult, one of our SecureCHAINS partners had arranged for a 2 hour workshop as one of each day's parallel sessions. Highlights from these workshops were:

Miguel Sousa (INOVA+ Portugal) gave an overview of the SecureCHAINS project.

Jurgen von der Lippe (vdconsult, Germany) gave an overview of weak spots in the Security Technology Supply Chains.

Marco Andres (ZENITH GmbH Germany) explained the Enterprise European Network, which can be considered as a mixture of Business Link and a network of SMEs in all EU member states together with 19 countries countries outside the EU. SMEs working in security could obviously be a subset of these and this idea was expanded in Day 2.

Andreas Walte (Airsense Analytics GmbH, Germany) gave a presentation on the problems of a small German company obtaining funding in the field of gas detection. He described his experience in trying to raise funds at local, federal or European level. He had a good relationship with the fundholder at local state level; he could frankly discuss his ideas and they would tell him just as frankly whether they were good ideas or not. He could get funding approved within 3-6 months. Federal systems were a bit more more difficult, but 4-8 months was par for getting release of funds. Attempts to draw on European funding were long and drawn out and labour intensive. He had made about 4 attempts and each one had failed.

Torben Hecker (Director NCAS - National competence Centre for Aviation Security Research, Germany) gave a presentation on Air Transport Security Needs. He explained that NCAS had been founded in 2009 by Lufthansa with the vision that passengers, staff, luggage and cargo are to be automatically checked for all dangerous substances without anyone having to take off or present objects or open luggage or containers. He then traced the process of customers entering an airport and the various checks that they were subjected to and the weak points in the process.

Gina Linkman (Fraunhofer FKIE, Germany) described a new modelling approach in Dealing with maritime security processes. She reminded us that ISPS had been imposed on world traffic by the US in 2004, and the main problem was that there was no logical or chronological structure in the requirement. This led to much documentation and duplication.

The project was called VESPER - Improving the Security of Passengers on Ferries. The approach was business process modelling - a scientifically assisted ISPS exercise. It was reminiscent of the UML approach - trying to cut out the extraneous operations and concentrate on the ones that support the overall requirement. A natural outcome was that the methodology allowed weak points to be identified.

To finish, Dr Jean Cornier of vdconsult and Marco Andres described the relevance of EEN to the SecureCHAINS project. The modus operandi of the SecureCHAINS project would involve:

• Workshops, on-site visits, interviews, questionaire with small or large companies, RTOs, FP7 security projects

• Organising workshops at Trade Fairs in Europe

• An Expert Evaluation board

• Assistance at finding partners at National and Euro Level

— Proper use of the EEN

— Links with National contact points of EC FP7

— Support bids for funding

The official report of the Essen Trade Fair can be downloaded here

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September 2010: SRC 2010 extols the contributions of SMEs to Security Technology

The need to engage with SMEs more closely was a point which was made many times during the proceedings at SRC '10 held at Oostende, Belgium on 22nd - 24th September.

SMEs were recognised by successive speakers as engines for growth. It was necessary to integrate the work done by SMEs with that of the large companies and RTOs.

It was acknowledged that the FP7 process was long drawn out, and this did not sit well with the dynamic of SMEs who could translate good ideas into products in a much more rapid timescale. SMEs were characterised by 'High Octane Enthusiasm', 'Dynamism', 'Passion' and 'Mobility'.

These dynamic responses offered by SMEs are of major importance with security threats changing rapidly, necessitating a rapid response. Everyone was aware that the transport security problems continually evolve, but speakers also warned for example about the threat of about 'Cyber wars' pointing to the recent experience of Estonia and Georgia. Cybercrime was also on the increase, and necessitated better preventative measures.

The research needed to be closer to the market place - i.e. researchers needed to understand the security trends and developing threats and not work in a vacuum. More thought was needed to link research with procurement, so that the time taken to translate ideas to equipment was minimised. However, it was important to ensure that new equipment was properly integrated into current systems, not just tagged on. The solutions also had to be robust and meet quality standards.

Speakers called for innovative partnerships between SMEs and Academia. It was also felt that clusters of SMEs could give extra synergy.

The need to update IPR was also stressed, and it was pointed out that violations against IPR were costing companies over € 150Bn per annum. Moreover the clear up rate against industrial espionage was <30% with many crimes not being reported.

Other speakers argued the need for the EU to promote good government amongst the failed states of the world, states which provide safe havens for terrorist organisations. The point was made forcibly that security was inseparable from economics.

The potential terrorist is most vulnerable when crossing a border. Border security was therefore an important theme of the conference, not only from the point of view of exclusion of undesirable and dangerous people, but also the need to save lives of desperate illegal immigrants who risk everything to be able to enter the EU, seen by many outside as stable, prosperous and secure.

Finally it was noted that security in the EU was made more complicated by developments in recent years, regarding the privatisation of public infrastructure. One third of security infrastructure is now in private hands and private firms may have different priorities. Security cannot be guaranteed by EU states on their own, yet the EU security infrastructure, spread between EU member states and private hands doesn't have a clear cut owner. This is a task that the European Parliament needs to address with some urgency.

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June 2010: Sollerta achieves ISO9001:2008

Sollerta has just completed its triennial audit and took the opportunity to update all the Quality documents to the new ISO9001:2008 standard.

The Sollerta Quality Management System could be adapted to other SMEs. Sollerta will shortly be offering a service to SMEs to assist them develop their quality standards and to achieve ISO accreditation.

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May 2010: SecureCHAINS - successor to SecureSME

Sollerta is collaborating with leading Security Expert Organisations in Europe in a new project funded under the European Commission FP7 Security Programme 2009. The SecureCHAINS project was launched officially on 1 May 2010 and the length of the project is 24 months.

SecureCHAINS is a project to integrate Security Technology Supply Chains and identify weaknesses and untapped potential. SecureCHAINS aims to actively involve researchers, SMEs, government institutions, major companies and major industrial enterprises to examine technologies capable of tackling a number of major topics in the field of security in Europe.

The main mission of SecureCHAINS is to contribute to a more competitive Security Technologies Supply Chain (STSC) and the objectives of the project are:

The partners in this collaboration are: Inovamais, SA (PT); Fraunhofer (DE), Thales Alenia Space (IT), DHL (DE), Innova SpA (IT), Sollerta (UK), ROBOTIKER-Tecnalia (SP), Vdlconsult (DE), RoNDU - “Carol I” National Defence University (RO), Alma Consulting Group (FR), Teseo (BE), INA - Southeastern Europe Telecommunications & Informatics Research Institute (GR)

The opening meeting will be in May

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April 2010: Sollerta appointed by the DMN to investigate ‘Training Brokering’

The Dorset Marine Network was set up to foster and support marine businesses in Dorset. Sollerta is a founder member. The DMN has recognised that SME's often cannot obtain training courses focused to their specific needs. Other business networks have developed a training brokering service for their members, where the network identifies training needs and liaises with training providers so that training courses can be set up specific to these needs.

Sollerta has been asked to investigate the feasibility and applicability to the DMN, drawing on the experience of other networks, and to develop a business process through which training can be offered, specific to members’ needs.

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December 2009: Sollerta joins the PROPOSSE Project

PROPOSSE is a multinational collaboration, sponsored by the European commission to promote short sea shipping between Ireland, UK, France , Spain and Portugal. A number of companies are involved:

Sollerta is working as a subcontractor to MSE. One of Sollerta's tasks is to explore the circumstances where SME's and their freight forwarders would choose to use a short sea shipping route to import or export goods to or from France, Spain or Portugal instead of the more conventional land routes through Dover and across France.

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