A briefing from the Scottish Defence Procurement and Supply Chain Summit, Glasgow
If the opening panel of SDS set out the strategic prize, the second panel got into the practical detail SMEs in the room had come to hear. Titled Prime Contractors Opening Doors for Scottish SMEs, this was the candid conversation about what actually happens between an SME with a good idea and a prime with a category list. Chaired by Coreen McCubbin, Chief Technology Officer at the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS), the panel brought together a prime contractor, the operator of the defence sector’s most-recognised supplier qualification platform, and two SME chief executives who have walked this road themselves.
The panel comprised:
- Gareth Hedicker, Chief Operating Officer, Babcock Marine
- Didde Bjerglund, Director, Hellios Information (operators of JOSCAR)
- Andrew Cowie, CEO, Denchi Group
- Yan Tiefenbrun, Managing Director, Castle Precision
McCubbin opened by setting the policy backdrop: MOD’s commitment to lift annual SME spend to £7.5 billion by 2028, the launch of the Defence Office for Small Business Growth, and the new SME commercial pathway designed to shorten time-to-contract from two years to one. The panel’s job, she said, was to ask what those commitments mean in practice – and, critically, where the opportunities for SMEs actually sit.
Where the opportunity is – and why now is different
Gareth Hedicker set the scene with a candid view from a prime that has been re-thinking how it engages. “We’re in a period of unprecedented change in terms of how quickly you take someone’s idea and turn it into a product or service. That’s one of the greatest opportunities from an SME perspective.” Defence’s procurement instincts, Hedicker said, are evolving – partly under the lessons of Ukraine – to embrace agility, smaller contract types, and faster decision making.
Yan Tiefenbrun, MD of Castle Precision, framed the opportunity space across three useful categories:
- Existing supplier ramp-up – primes asking established suppliers to bring on additional capacity for live programmes.
- New product capability – supporting development of new platforms where suppliers are needed on the new product introduction side.
- New programmes – those just beginning to emerge that will need supplier engagement from the outset.
Andrew Cowie, CEO of Denchi Group, added that SMEs should treat the opportunity landscape as “a kind of matrix” – there are existing programmes in flight, technology refresh moments, and brand-new programmes coming on stream. Mapping your capability against that matrix is the starting point.
The hygiene factors: get the basics right
Yan Tiefenbrun delivered what was arguably the most useful single answer of the morning: the practical checklist of what a Scottish SME needs in place before a prime will seriously consider it. The point isn’t that any one of these will win the contract – it’s that without them, “you’re not even in the room.”
- JOSCAR – the supplier accreditation platform widely adopted across defence and aerospace.
- ISO 9001 (and, where relevant, AS9100 for aerospace).
- Cyber Essentials Plus and increasingly ISO 27001 – non-negotiable as supply chains tighten on cyber.
- ISO 14001 environmental management or EcoVadis – the ESG layer.
- People certifications and workforce management evidence.
- Maturity in commercial performance – demonstrating reliability, on-time delivery and quality at scale.
“With all of that in place,” Tiefenbrun said, “you’re at the starting line. Then comes the BD effort – and that’s just as complex. These are big structures. It’s about finding where your category management sits, and using the ecosystem – ADS, Scottish Enterprise, Scottish Engineering, Make UK Defence, DSEi, DPRTE, the regional clusters – to navigate to the right people.”
The Babcock SME Charter: changing how primes behave
The biggest single announcement from the panel came from Gareth Hedicker, who walked the room through Babcock’s new SME Charter – developed after a structured engagement programme with the University of Exeter. Hedicker was refreshingly honest about why the charter exists. “This charter isn’t just a charter for SMEs. It actually talks about what we need to do as a larger company – and that brings real change.”
In practical terms, the charter is bringing:
- Different scales and types of contract, including smaller package opportunities suited to SMEs.
- Improved financial terms, including more SME-friendly payment terms.
- Funding and support mechanisms, including embedded support from Babcock and customer teams into SME businesses where it makes sense.
- A new portal and routing function so SMEs reach the right person inside Babcock, not a generic inbox.
- A “shopping list” of capability needs that SMEs can engage against directly.
Hedicker acknowledged this is a culture change inside Babcock as much as outside. “Some of our own teams will find this novel. But we cannot meet the requirements coming at us without changing. And we cannot do that without SMEs on board.”
JOSCAR and the changing accreditation landscape
Didde Bjerglund, representing Hellios – the operator of JOSCAR – described the evolution of the platform since the 2022 MOD SME Action Plan asked primes to publish their SME engagement plans. The good news, she said, is that the burden of demonstrating compliance has reduced for many SMEs, because a single qualification on JOSCAR is now recognised across multiple primes – “you don’t have to provide the same information multiple times.”
She also flagged the trend toward primes publishing their own SME charters, alongside Babcock’s, and noted increasing collaboration between primes on common standards. “We’ve come quite a long way as an industry, but there is more to do.”
Walking the road: an SME perspective
Andrew Cowie of Denchi Group offered the long-haul SME view. “I joined the business 10 years ago. In that time, I’ve been involved in developing connections, improving credibility, achieving certifications when things are difficult, and delivering successfully. There are a lot of aspects to it.”
Cowie’s central message was that SMEs need to think strategically about credibility long before any specific contract opportunity. “Contracts can come along very quickly when they come. But the path to be in the right position – that takes time.”
He also urged SMEs not to think of “defence” as a single market. “When graduates come to us and say ‘I want to work in defence’ – defence is BAE Systems, Babcock, MBDA, Leidos, Thales, Leonardo. They are all doing quite different things. Be specific about who your customer is.”
What to do first if you’re new to defence
Asked by Coreen McCubbin what the single most important practical step would be for an SME looking to enter defence by 2028, the panel converged on a clear set of answers:
- Yan Tiefenbrun: Get the hygiene factors right first – JOSCAR, ISOs, cyber, supply chain performance maturity. Then start the BD effort, but pace yourself for the long timelines.
- Andrew Cowie: Identify the core technology you want to bring to market, and build the evidence that you’re credible and trustworthy as a business.
- Didde Bjerglund: Be clear which prime you actually need to engage with – and at what level of the system your product or service fits.
- Gareth Hedicker: Be clear about the problem you solve. “Don’t go to a customer with ‘I have this great thing.’ Go with ‘this is the problem, here’s how I help you solve it.’ The conversation is much better that way.”
Q&A: the candid floor
The Q&A returned to the toughest practical question of the day. One SME representative asked whether primes might consider “Dragon’s Den” style supplier engagement days – two-minute pitches, three minutes of questions, the right people in the room. Hedicker was open to the idea, particularly for well-defined emerging requirements where there’s a clear use case. Bjerglund added that several of these formats already exist – through DSTL, UKDI (which now incorporates DASA), and the regional clusters. “If you know about these, they’re great. Look local first.”
Stuart Maguire of Leonardo, contributing from the floor, made a point that captured the spirit of the day: primes, ADS, Make UK Defence and MOD all need to “learn together” how to develop an engagement model that actually works. “Through the regional clusters, that’s where it’s happening.” It was a fitting closing call to action – the work has started, but it’s a shared job.
The takeaway
The second panel of SDS made one truth unmistakable: primes know the system has been hard for SMEs to navigate, and they are changing. Babcock’s SME Charter, Thales’s new ecosystem, the evolution of JOSCAR into a genuinely cross-prime tool, and the £7.5 billion SME funding ambition all point in the same direction. But SMEs have a role too – getting the accreditations in place, being clear about the problem they solve, and using the ecosystem of support around them.
The doors are opening. The next 12 months will determine how widely.
The Scottish Defence Procurement and Supply Chain Summit was delivered by BIP Solutions in partnership with ADS Scotland. The DPRTE community continues the conversation between events at dprte.co.uk. Save the date for SDS27 – and bring the questions you most need answered.
