Skip to content

Driving innovation: CDS Defence Support heads up Aurora SME steering group

Clock icon 2 minutes reading time

CDS Defence Support (CDS DS) and the Aurora partnership announced today the appointment of Baz Flower, Strategic Director of Marketing & Sales, as the representative of the Aurora Engineering Delivery Partnership Small to Medium Enterprises (SME) Provider Network Steering Group.

heads-up-aurora-news-listing
The Engineering Delivery Partnership (EDP), appointed by MOD in October 2018, is designed to provide access to the very best engineering expertise the UK has to offer, from micro companies to large scale organisations of >250 staff. The aim of the partnership is clear; harness the power of SME’s to deliver innovation to the defence market. This, in turn, will help to reduce the cost of delivery for the MOD without affecting the quality of equipment and support for the UK Armed Forces.

The EDP is currently made up of 280 companies, with 70% of these being SME’s. To ensure a collaborative approach is fostered across the framework, four Network Steering Groups have been created to allow large, medium, small and micro organisations to share insights and opportunities. These Network Steering Groups will provide a forum for communication and engagement with key stakeholders in delivering Engineering Services to Defence Equipment & Support (DE&S) and will be key in ensuring the success of this new initiative.

Baz said of the appointment;

“I am delighted to have been elected to represent the medium sized organisations in the Aurora Engineering Delivery Partnership. CDS DS’s aim is to work with the Aurora team to help create a collaborative environment for success, providing a world class engineering capability to the end customer and an environment in which SMEs feel equitably represented. 

The SME community accounts for over 90 suppliers throughout the EDP supply chain and around £50m/annum of defence spending, so the importance of each group cannot be downplayed.

We believe that our strong relationship with senior MOD EDP decision makers will be an asset to the wider supply chain, and I am genuinely excited by the opportunity to represent SME as part of the Aurora solution. It’s the innovation and agility of the SME community which will be the real key to delivering a vastly improved engineering service to the MOD”