Strategic Procurement & Commercial Management
Elysium EPL works with its clients to develop tailored, performance optimising procurement solutions to complex government and industry requirements.
Collaborative contracting arrangements that make the most of business relationships and those which seek to encourage and support Australian businesses into supply chains are our specialties.
Elysium EPL is honoured to have assisted Defence with the release of the Request for Tender for the Capability Life Cycle Manager (CLCM) for the Hobart class destroyers (DDG).
This project is a key deliverable under Plan Galileo, Defence’s strategy to sustain the Royal Australian Navy’s growing fleet that will result from Continuous Naval Shipbuilding, to ensure it can fight and win at sea.
The
Challenge
The challenge was replacing the existing bespoke sustainment regime that has been operating for five years with this new model, while considering the stage of life of the asset, the significant upgrade program it would need, as well as other considerations.
Key to delivering this project was ensuring the principles of the Future Maritime Sustainment Model (FMSM) were incorporated, to ensure the future DDG CLCM is fit for purpose and contributes to the benefits provided by the FMSM.
This project covered multiple areas within Defence and Industry (Navy staff, Systems Program Offices and Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group broadly), therefore stakeholder engagement was complex, and the case for change had to be made at the senior leadership level as well as at the working level. Our team brought their experience to the project by managing the project’s considerable probity checks, as well as their understanding of the complex technical and commercial tender requirements.
Our Comprehensive Solution
Led by the Commonwealth, Elysium EPL developed the new arrangements, with the strategy design phase running from April to October of 2020, and the development of the market approach in the nine months following.
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Designing the approach to market incorporated several innovative elements based on our team’s extensive experience. These included:
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Incorporating scenario-based questions to test tenderer’s holistic understanding of key concepts;
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Use of collaborative contracting principles through requirements for a Joint Relationship Management Plan to maximise business performance;
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The inclusion of the ability to conduct complex capability enhancement and integration projects as required by the Commonwealth;
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Use of additional information, documents and background clauses to provide further context and clear understanding of the requirement; and
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Use of existing management plans to minimise the requirement to produce multiple tender deliverables and reduce the cost of tendering.
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To ensure the success of this approach, we invested time and effort so stakeholders understood the case for change and the desired outcome. Key to this was ensuring that the teams who will manage the CLCM work were comfortable with the new model, and that their feedback on both the current and updated model was collected, considered, and incorporated into the new approach.
The
Enduring
Value
The approach to market documents were provided on time for Defence to initiate its Request for Tender on 25 October 2021. And, as a result of Elysium EPL’s involvement, the Commonwealth now has a well-researched and detailed in-service CLCM template that it can adapt and use over time, along with processes and procedures to enact them.
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Another enduring outcome is that there are now long-term sustainment arrangements that will optimise the capability in an era of Continuous Naval Shipbuilding and an evolving strategic environment. Because we took stakeholders along the journey, they will enable implementation of it and its success. We are also developing a suite of training modules that will build the Commonwealth’s workforce capability, so they can succeed under the new arrangements long after we are gone.