Atkins Selected as UK FRES Preferred Bidder

The Minister of Defence Procurement, Lord Bach, announced that the UK Ministry of Defense has selected Atkins Defence as the preferred bidder for the Future Rapid Effect System (FRES) program and will assume the innovative Systems House role.

Atkins will now conduct the 24-month assessment phase of the FRES program combining the mix of capabilities of the whole team and taking the FRES program forward. Negotiations between Atkins and the UK MoD will start aiming to achieve an agreement and to place a contract before the end of the year.

The Systems House role is similar to US Army Future Combat Systems (FCS) lead contractors. The Systems House will determine optimized paths to get the FRES project on time and on budget relying upon key capabilities provided by British Defense contractors. Other tenders for the Systems House role were PA Consulting, EDS and QinetiQ. PA Consulting withdrew from the competition before the down select decision.

FRES is envisaged as a family of ground vehicles that will meet current and planned requirements for ground military vehicles ranging from combat to combat service support. These vehicles will feature maximum commonality at platform, subsystems and component levels. Low ownership costs will be achieved by the FRES platform.

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