John, can you please explain what you mean by "IP information". It's public record that the combat systems IP goes directly to the Government of Canada, not Irving. I'm just trying to understand all the angst about this supposed IP issue.Yep, it was likely the same team that made the complaint. They understandably did not want to turn over IP information to Irving which is why they made this "Hail Mary" offer directly to the Canadian government. They were pi$$ed and decided there was no point in jumping through all the hoops in the tender process and wasting a $hitload on money on a no-win proposition. Again, it will be interesting to learn if there are other bids besides the vendors which have declared themselves.
Please see link: Speaking notes for National Shipbuilding Strategy technical briefing on Canadian Surface Combatant request for proposal – National Shipbuilding Strategy – Sea – Defence Procurement – Buying and Selling – PSPCI can't find the article at the moment (will post if I do), but I remember a number of months ago reading in a Canadian news website, a number of the bidders (and at least three nations were mentioned, including Australia), were very concerned about the way Canada was running the bidding process for the CSC project.
It basically came down to the fact that in a 'normal' bidding process, that all of the information on the 'offered' design went straight to the particular Government for a possible decision, eg, business to Government or business/Government to Government.
The point of the article was, and why there were complaints, was that the tender documents (and all of the bid information, including sensitive IP information), was to be sent to a 'private' company charged with receiving the bids on behalf of the Canadian Government to review (the concern of course is that that private company could also be a future 'competitor', makes sense, obviously!!).
This is what I find strange, the Canadian Government has instead of receiving that information directly, has appointed a 'commercial third party' to receive, and evaluate, that information on it's behalf.
I don't blame the bidders one little bit, it would be like the US Government asking that all bids for a project be sent to Boeing or LM for evaluation, why would anyone be mad enough to do that??
Anyway, just an another example of how screwed up the Canadian defence procurement process is!!!
The CMS will be awarded by the Government of Canada directly. No Irving involvement. I believe the supposed IP issue has been severely overblown. This does not look to be much different from the Australian competition, and appears to be well structured to ensure fairness.