Rapid Manufacture Ventilator System- UCL&Oxford Optronix

The ‘Ventilator Challenge’ was created by the UK government and delivered across several government departments (Department of Health and Social Care, Cabinet Office and Ministry of Defence) as part of the drive to increase ventilator supply and support the UK National Health Service (NHS) in its response to the Coronavirus disease global pandemic (Covid-19).

In March 2020, the Prime Minister called on manufacturers to help the UK to step up production of ventilators to support the UK’s response to the virus and save lives. This included working on new or adapted ventilator designs, as well the Government's work to buy ventilators from abroad.

This contract was awarded as a result of the RMVS project.

RMVS CANs

Existing CANs relating to the RMVS project are 2020/S 100-243206, 2020/S 167-406004 and 2021/S 002-003456 (RMVS CANs).

Due to the need to respond rapidly to the emerging situation, some design work, testing, developing and manufacturing was undertaken before a formalised contract with known costs and outputs was put in place between Cabinet Office and those RMVS suppliers at the time of the RMVS CANs.

Instead Cabinet Office gave commitments to those RMVS suppliers to enable those suppliers to support the RMVS project at significant pace and to mitigate those suppliers operating entirely at risk during extremely turbulent and changing circumstances. The RMVS CANs reflected the estimated values as best known at the time and cost caps within which suppliers were operating.

At the time of the RMVS CANs, in order to be as transparent as possible with the market, information available at the time of entering into those commitments was provided, notwithstanding that it was expected to take several months to settle on the final output and resulting contracts.

The RMVS CANs were therefore published to notify the market of the estimated and maximum limits of the commitments Cabinet Office had entered into to support the RMVS project. Where a supplier appears on more than one RMVS CAN, this reflects an increase to the estimate or cost cap previously notified to the market.

This contract is the Ventilator Challenge: Provision of Rapid Manufacture Ventilator Systems (RMVS) resulting from the support by Oxford Optronix to the RMVS project and which is the output of Oxford Optronix appearing on 2020/S 100-243206 of the RMVS CANs.