MoD DAIC: Project Spotter - Data Labelling Requirement

Description

Summary of work Purpose: Project SPOTTER is a high priority Defence requirement that uses computer vision techniques to detect and classify objects of Defence interest within satellite imagery. This will provide crucial information that will allow Ministry Of Defence (MOD) Imagery Analysts to prioritise imagery for further analysis, and to focus attention on the most important intelligence first. It therefore offers improved efficiency and timeliness of intelligence reporting by enabling analysts to deliver actionable insights faster. Defence AI Centre: The Defence Artificial Intelligence Centre (DAIC) is championing and enabling the rapid adoption of AI in Defence to deliver enhanced operational outcomes. Everything the DAIC does will accelerate AI solutions to the Defence operational community at the pace they need in an ambitious, safe and responsible manner. The DAIC are the Delivery Agent for Project SPOTTER, one of many AI projects that is being delivered by DAIC across the MOD enterprise. Overview of Requirement: The requirement will be for a Limit of Liability of Days, ged at Time and Materials for two Lines of effort Data Labelling and Data Science Support. The contract will run from 1 Apr 24 to 31 Mar 25. All T&M must be exhausted by contract end. 3.2 There are several vacant roles within the SPOTTER project suppliers are invited to bid for one or more of the roles below: 3.3 The size of the data labelling team provided is at the suppliers discretion, however a suitable number of FTEs must be provided to meet the milestones in section 4. For management and continuity purposes, the data science effort must not be divided between no more than 2 personnel. Where the supplied staff will work East of England Who the organisation using the products or services is The Defence AI Centre, part of Defence Digital Why the work is being done To create new machine learning models which can be used to detect and classify objects in imagery assist and improve existing analysis techniques. The business problem Imagery data for analysis is increasing at an exponential rate, digitisation and automation is required to deliver efficiencies in this field. The people who will use the product or service User type: Imagery Analyst Definition: The Image Analyst identifies objects of interest from imagery. As an Image Analyst I need to identify objects of interest from imagery efficiently so that decisions can be made faster. Any pre-market engagement done NA Work done so far Circa 25,000 objects have been labelled by incumbent supplier. Machine learning model high level design has been completed Which phase the project is in Alpha Existing team The SPOTTER project team consists of 4 smaller teams: Management: Responsible and accountable for the technical, financial, and commercial aspects of the project and the day to management of resources. Application development: Responsible for agile design, development, and deployment of the SPOTTER application along with its integration with the models. The Contractor will be required to work closely with this team, to integrate machine learning models with the application. Data Labelling: Working closely with data science, the labelling team are responsible for delivering the labelled objects within the NTM image data required to train the model. This contract will deliver all the Data Labelling resources in the project. Data Science: Responsible for the training, delivery and integration of the deep learning computer vision model and integration of external models with the application. This contract will deliver half of the required Data Science resources in the project. Address where the work will be done The work will be exclusively undertaken at RAF Wyton for the duration of the project. Due to the security restrictions and infrastructure requirements for this project, there is no scope for remote working or using an alternative MOD or non-MOD location RAF Wyton, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, PE28 2EA United Kingdom Working arrangements The work will be exclusively undertaken at RAF Wyton for the duration of the project. Due to the security restrictions and infrastructure requirements for this project, there is no scope for remote working or using an alternative MOD or non-MOD locations. Security and vetting requirements Developed Vetting (DV) More information about the Security requirements: Personnel are required to hold DV for the duration of the Project. Personnel are required to be read onto STRAP TK prior to joining the project. Supplier will need to be on the list of approved suppliers for the relevant Technical Assistance Agreements (see Statement of Requirement for details). Latest start date 2 April 2024 Expected contract length Contract length: 1 years 0 months 0 days Optional extension: 0 years 6 months 0 days Special terms and conditions special term or condition: Please note that copy of Order Form and Schedule 17 supplied at Stage 1 are drafts and for information only at this stage. Please note Schedule 17 includes DEFCONs. Bidders are to note that Off-Payroll working rules (IR35) apply and the Contractor will be required to confirm that all workers deployed on the contract have full tax and national insurance deducted from their earnings. Please note that there is no Cyber Risk Assessment code for this procurement (the Cyber Risk Assessment result was Not Applicable) Please note that payment will be made through the MoDs CP and F system, and suppliers will need to be registered on this system to receive payment as well as have an Exostar account to submit invoices through. Budget Indicative maximum: £856000 Indicative minimum: The contract value is not specified by the buyer Further information: Value excludes VAT Contracted out service or supply of resource? Supply of resource: the off-payroll rules may apply Questions and Clarifications 1. Can Dual UK Nationals view the documents for this opportunity? Yes – the documents have a security classification of OFFICIAL with no nationality restrictions Last Updated : <strong>20/02/2024</strong> 2. On the SAL, please can you clarify what you mean regarding the wording surrounding up to SECRET and above The majority of the information that the roles will be exposed to will be SECRET however delivery of the roles will include some information at OFFICIAL and above SECRET Last Updated : <strong>20/02/2024</strong> 3. Will you provide the Technical Assistance Agreements outlined in the SOR to suppliers at Stage 2? No, the TAA’s and associated GC’s are owned by the supplier of the materiels that are subject to ITAR controls and the Authority does not have the right to circulate these. Last Updated : <strong>26/02/2024</strong> 4. Good afternoon, Please could you kindly clarify the expected format for the stage 1 responses? The wording of bidders confirm they have... for the stage 1 questions, has made us wonder if the Authority is expecting yesno answers, however the 750 acter limit suggests otherwise. Please could you also confirm that we are not required to submit responses to the stage 2 questions (technical, social value and cultural fit) until we have received noticed that we are successful at stage 1? Therefore the closing date is 15-03-2024 14:00 for the written response. Thank you in advance. Regarding Stage 1 - yes, Stage 1 is a self-ion stage for Bidders. Bidders should respond affirmatively to each question in Stage 1 if they can agree to the question. Unfortunately the acter limit is not something that can be changed. Regarding Stage 2 - correct Stage 2 Technical Questions are for information only at Stage 1 and do not require a response at Stage 1. Last Updated : <strong>20/02/2024</strong> 5. How do you plan to down potential supplies if you receive more than 20 submissions that have responded affirmatively to all questions? Thank you If more than 20 responses are received that confirm bidders can meet the mandatory requirements, it is ly that the competition will not continue. The Authority asks that, especially with regards to the contract start date of 2nd April 2024, the Security Clearance requirements and the ITAR restrictions, potential bidders carefully consider that they can agree to all Stage 1 questions and would meet the minimum scores required in the Stage 2 questions before bidding. Last Updated : <strong>21/02/2024</strong> 6. Further to the response contained to clarification question 3, can you confirm that the only requirement for Stage 1 is to Agree or Disagree with each question and you do not require 750 acters for each response? Yes confirmed. It seems the CCS Portal has deleted some acters from our responses, so apologies that some words appear to have been cut out. Stage 1 is effectively a self ion stage for Bidders. Unfortunately, the limit of acters is not something that can be changed. Last Updated : <strong>23/02/2024</strong> 7. Do you require submission in the form of the 12 questions “ocds-pfhb7i-38780-FC-DOS 6 FC L1 Bid Pack - Attachment 1 Statement of Requirements” documents or the 5 questions listed in “20240116-SPOTTER_Data_Labelling_Evaluation_Questions” document At Stage 1, only the Stage 1 questions need to be responded to. At Stage 2, the questions currently in the Evaluation document will become live for Bidders to respond to. Last Updated : <strong>23/02/2024</strong> 8. Can you please confirm the resource requirements for the Data Science category? As per 3.3 in the Statement of Requirement document, the data science effort must not be provided by more than 1 FTE and the total number of days required in the contract is 200 as per Table 1 in the Statement of Requirement Last Updated : <strong>23/02/2024</strong> 9. Within the SOR DOS notice, it states “there are several vacant roles within the SPOTTER project suppliers are invited to bid for one or more of the roles below” - are you open to us proposing itional roles to support your requirements eg project management? It appears that this information has been transposed from an old document. For the Statement of Requirement, please refer to file 20231206-Data_Labelling_Data_Science_SOR-O. This requirement is for the Data Labelling and Data Scientist or Data Engineer roles only. Proposals for any other roles will not be evaluated and will be ignored. Last Updated : <strong>23/02/2024</strong> 10. Do you require any pricing as part of the Stage 1 submission? No pricing is required as part of Stage 1 Last Updated : <strong>23/02/2024</strong> 11. Can you please clarify if Bidders need to upload their Stage 1 response under Technical response section on My Submission page or the response needs to be submitted as a message with an attachment on the messaging system? Bidders should respond through the portal and not as a message. We do not have visibility of how bidders respond, so any questions on how to do this should be raised with CCS. Last Updated : <strong>26/02/2024</strong> 12. As we understand, Stage 2 response would need to be submitted under Technical Response section of the My Submission Tab. However, we do not see any option for uploading the price bid? Please confirm if the price bid would need to be provided in the same document. As we understand, the Price Section does not appear until Stage 1 is completed. Once Stage 2 commences, if there is no obvious place to include the price, please clearly include the price in another area of the response. Last Updated : <strong>26/02/2024</strong> 13. Please can you confirm the breakdown of resource requirements for the 450 hours ie: can this be delivered by multiple people as and when available, or is there an expectation for full time personnel to be committed to the task Please note that the Statement of Requirement states 450 days of expected effort, not hours. As per paragraph 3.3 of the Statement of Requirement, the number of resources can be at the suppliers discretion as long as the Key Project Milestones in Table 4 of the Statement of Requirement are met. However, please note that consistency of resources across the duration of the project would be positively received. Last Updated : <strong>26/02/2024</strong> 14. Is TUPE applicable for this contract? Please see response from the Authority: TUPE Applicability Of TUPE 1. Your attention is drawn to the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 2006 (TUPE), as amended and or the Service Provision Change (Protection of Employment) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 2006, as amended from time to time. The Authority would be neither transferor nor transferee of the employees in the circumstances of any contract awarded as a result of this invitation and it is your responsibility to consider whether or not TUPE applies to this re-let and to tender accordingly. Notwithstanding this, you will wish to note that it is the Authoritys view that TUPE is unly to be applicable if this Invitation to Tender results in a Contract being placed as the incumbent contractor has advised that there is no organised grouping of employees carrying out the services, although the Authority shall not be liable for the opinion expressed above. 2. It remains your responsibility to ensure that your tender takes full account of all the relevant circumstances of this contract re-let and tender accordingly. You are required to confirm when responding that you will not make any claim or demand or take any actions or proceedings against the Authority (nor seek to avoid any contract or seek any amendment to a contract placed with the contractor by the Authority) arising from or relating to the provision of the information, whether or not you are awarded a contract as a result of this Invitation to Tender. Failure to provide clear and unequivocal confirmation may result in your tender being deemed non-compliant. Last Updated : <strong>28/02/2024</strong>