The Dutch Ministry of Defence (MoD) has extended its contract with Starion Netherlands for concurrent design support by 4 years. Starion’s experts will continue to provide training and team leadership roles for concurrent design studies for hardware and software projects across the Dutch Armed Forces, extending the relationship that started in 2019.
Following 5 successful years of providing concurrent design support to the Dutch Command for Material and IT (COMMIT) of the Dutch MoD, Starion’s experts in model-based system engineering (MBSE) will continue to provide study leadership roles and training for a further 4 years under a new contract.
Since COMMIT (formerly known as Dutch Material Organisation, DMO) started to implement the concurrent design methodology in 2019, over 50 concurrent design studies have been carried out across all three Dutch Armed Forces, contributing to the design and specification of a broad range of hardware and software requirements. Among the projects covered by these studies are: the new medium-utility helicopter for the Royal Netherlands Air Force; the Future Air Defender and Anti-Submarine Warfare Frigate for the Royal Netherlands Navy; and the Foxtrot tactical digitisation programme, which covers the modernisation of the mobile communications infrastructure across the Dutch Armed Forces.
In 2022, COMMIT opened its own dedicated concurrent design facility (CDF) at Soesterberg in The Netherlands. Starion’s experts contributed to the realisation of the new facility.
Rajko Brokken, Change Manager at COMMIT, said: “Our relationship with Starion over the last 5 years has been extremely fruitful. Their experts have led and supported our concurrent design studies in a way that has resulted in faster, more efficient outcomes for the MoD’s requirements – we’ve found that the speed of completing each study has accelerated by a factor of three on average, while using just half the manpower previously required. Having a purpose-built facility to run these studies is extremely valuable.”
Sam Gerené, Competence Area Lead for Concurrent Design and MBSE, added: “We are looking forward to continuing our relationship with the Dutch COMMIT and supporting it in applying concurrent design to more types of defence projects. This methodology is proving to be beneficial for a very wide range of requirements, which is exactly what defence agencies are faced with on a continual basis.”
The Dutch MoD adopted the concurrent design methodology after seeing it being used successfully by the European Space Agency in its Concurrent Design Facility at the European Space Technology and Research Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, which Starion has supported since 2001.
Image © Dutch Ministry of Defence
