Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
SIR PETER
SPENCER KCB, DR
IAIN WATSON
AND LIEUTENANT
GENERAL ANDREW
FIGGURES CBE
12 DECEMBER 2006
Q1 Chairman: Good morning and welcome
to this evidence session on FRES. Sir Peter, I wonder if you would
like to introduce your team for the record.
Sir Peter Spencer: General Figgures,
whom you all know, represents the sponsor for the requirement
as DCDS (EC), and Dr Iain Watson is the Operations Director in
the DPA who has the FRES team in his cluster of projects.
Q2 Chairman: And DCDS (EC) means Deputy
Chief of Staff (Equipment Capability).
Sir Peter Spencer: Correct.
Q3 Chairman: And can you break down
exactly how your roles relate to the FRES programme please? Would
you like to each explain your own role in relation to the FRES
programme?
Lieutenant General Figgures: I
am a sponsor, in our parlance; so what does that mean? It means
I am responsible for establishing the requirement in the context
of our defence capability and balancing the resource that I put
to that requirement against the resources required for other requirements
across the defence capability. So I have two things to do: identify
the requirement and ensure that we have optimised it; and then
ensure that I put enough resource, enough money to it to ensure
that we deliver it when it is possible to deliver it.
Q4 Chairman: And, Sir Peter, what
is your role exactly in relation to FRES in comparison with General
Figgures?
Sir Peter Spencer: In comparison
with General Figgures I provide the resources in the DPA to deliver
against that requirement and I take the money which he gives to
me and we then deploy that on the various contracts. I delegate
that responsibility to the IPT leader who works for Dr Watson,
who is Operations Director, and he oversees the delivery of that
work. As Chief of Defence Procurement I play a major role in agreeing
the procurement strategy. I am a member of the Investment Approvals
Board so I am part of a team of five who consider the proposals
which come from the project sponsor and the team leader.
Q5 Chairman: And Dr Watson, what
is your role in this?
Dr Watson: As Sir Peter has said,
the IPT is within my cluster of IPTs. I act as the line manager.
Principally my role is to mentor and ensure that the team is undertaking
its work in accordance with best practice, to carry out periodic
review and assurance to make sure that we are actually achieving
our goals as we set out.
Q6 Chairman: What is DSTL's role?
Dr Watson: DSTL is the Defence
Science and Technology Laboratory. They are a support to the technical
investigations that we undertake in delivering any programme.
In the context of FRES, their principal areas are in armoured
vehicle engineering, in associated systems, and in the operational
analysis to support the requirement. So they are advisers to the
IPT.
Q7 Chairman: How many people in the
DPA are working on this project?
Sir Peter Spencer: 42 today; that
is 29 civilians, 13 Army and that team will build up as we go
into next year.
Q8 Mr Hancock: To what level will
it build up?
Sir Peter Spencer: At the moment
we are looking at an uplift of 14 posts but that is only the DPA
component of the team. If you add the DSTL and the Systems House
and the various embedded members from the military community and
from industry, then the team itself is 125 as an integrated team
with industry.
Q9 Mr Hancock: The ones you are recruiting
to come into post next year; what is their purpose? What would
they be doing specifically that is not being done now?
Sir Peter Spencer: What they will
be doing is, as you will have seen with the acquisition strategy—and
we are going to be launching four competitions—they will
be preparing the documentation which initiates those competitions;
they will be involved in the assessment of the tenders that come
back; and they will be involved in putting together the detailed
sets of proposals which the IAB will subsequently take as the
next stage of this programme.
Q10 Mr Hancock: So how long will
that take and should not some of these posts have been filled
before now? That work seems to me to be the sort of work that
should have been done by now.
Sir Peter Spencer: No, I do not
think so.
Q11 Mr Hancock: You do not think
so but I am just asking why it has not.
Sir Peter Spencer: Because we
have needed to understand in considerable detail precisely what
the requirements are going to be and what technologies are going
to be matured, and to determine the right balance between meeting
the long-term requirements as well as a relatively early introduction
into service, and to get the right sort of incremental strategy
in place. That has required us, if you recall from the brief we
sent to you, to understand the outcome of nine technology demonstrator
programmes.
Q12 Chairman: We will come on to
what the requirement is going to be in a few minutes. General
Figgures, would you describe yourself as in a sense the "customer"
for this vehicle?
Lieutenant General Figgures: Yes
I would.
Q13 Chairman: And how do you ensure
that your requirements are going to be met? In what forum do you
argue the case for the customer?
Lieutenant General Figgures: Well,
first of all there is the establishment of the requirement which
is a balance of demand and supply. There is no point in asking
for something that cannot be met from our potential suppliers.
The first part of that is establishing the requirement with respect
to the Army, and it is not just the Army Board but we establish
the requirement through the directors of the arms and services,
through the front-line command, and so there is an element of
balancing what is required in terms of a perfect solution and
what is required in terms of a robust solution that meets all
those individual users. That having been done we then discuss
with the DPA, in particular the Integrated Project Team Leader,
and the Ops Director, and finally at my level with the Chief of
Defence Procurement, just how we are going to balance that requirement
against the ability to meet it and the time-frame in which we
are going to meet it. How do we test that we have got it when
we eventually get it? We build up an integrated test evaluation
assessment plan which addresses all the lines of development such
that when it does come into service we can test it to see that
we have got what we intended to get or we are aware of any shortfalls
which we can develop over time through a through life capability
management plan.
Q14 Chairman: Do you know what you
expect to get?
Lieutenant General Figgures: Do
I know in terms of the acceptance criteria?
Q15 Chairman: I mean in terms of
the vehicle, do you know what you expect to get?
Lieutenant General Figgures: I
know what I expect to get in terms of the characteristics of that
vehicle.
Q16 Chairman: Can you explain that
to us?
Lieutenant General Figgures: The
characteristics that we are looking for are survivability, capacity,
tactical and operational mobility, the ability to generate power
and the ability to deliver information to the crew, and the overarching
piece is the ability for growth through life because what is required
today will change over time, and we have seen that in our recent
experience.
Q17 Mr Jones: General, you are the
advocate for the customer I think you described to the Chairman.
With no disrespect to yourself because you are a General of long
standing (although possibly coming up for retirement soon); where
does the front-line squaddie, the people who actually use these
vehicles fit into this process?
Lieutenant General Figgures: He
fits in at several stages. He fits into the requirement capture.
Q18 Mr Jones: And how do you do that?
Lieutenant General Figgures: By
the requirements being drawn together under the Director of Equipment
Capability, who does that through the arms and services directors,
who has at his disposal subject matter experts—
Q19 Mr Jones: That is the point.
I am asking about the people who use the equipment?
Lieutenant General Figgures: Yes
we do. We employ soldiers in the requirement capture, we employ
officers and soldiers in the Integrated Project Team, and we employ
soldiers in the armoured trials and development unit, soldiers
who have significant operational experience, and we employ soldiers,
both individuals and formed units, when it comes to accepting
it into service.
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