By ANDREW CHUTER Published: 20 Apr 2011 15:45
LONDON - The chief operating officer at the U.K. Defence Ministry's procurement and support arm is leaving the post and returning to the private sector as part of a shake-up in the top levels of the organization.
The Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) organization said in a statement April 20 that Andrew Tyler would exit the Ministry of Defence after a three-year stint in the post. Tyler's departure was first disclosed by Defense News.com at the start of the month.
In place of a chief operating officer, DE&S will share top-level responsibility for the delivery of equipment across the existing single service chiefs of materiel and a new civilian post - what DE&S is calling a Chief of Materiel (Joint Enablers).
Several other posts involving general resources and finance are also to be shuffled.
In addition to Tyler leaving, the MoD has announced it is doing away with the post of director general defense commercial, with the current incumbent, Andrew Manly, moving to take over the recently formed Defence Infrastructure Organization.
Businessman and former journalist Bernard Gray, appointed as the chief of Defence Materiel (CDM), takes over the commercial role previously filled by Manly at the center of Ministry of Defence operations.
The director general defense commercial was responsible for all aspects of the MoD's commercial management. The role was introduced under reforms implemented by Lord Drayson, the then-Labour government defense procurement minister.
Defense analyst Alex Ashbourne-Walmsley of Ashbourne Strategic Consulting said moving the commercial role from the center "cements the power of Bernard Gray and along with it, the authority of DE&S in the acquisition process."
Britain's defense procurement system has been plagued with cost and time overruns for years. DE&S and its predecessors have borne the brunt of the blame for those problems - sometimes unfairly.
Gray himself wrote a stinging critique of the performance of the procurement system in a report commissioned by the then-Labour government.
Tyler and Manly were both interviewed as potential CDMs before Gray accepted the position of running the organization responsible for Britain's annual 14 billion pound ($22.8 billion) defense procurement and support budget.
Reforming the top levels of DE&S is the first major reorganization move since Gray's appointment in December. Wider reforms of the MoD are expected to be unveiled in the next few months, when a government-appointed committee led by 1980s defense procurement boss Lord Levene is due to recommend structural changes across the department.
In a separate development unconnected with his role as the new procurement and support department boss, Gray was named in The Times newspaper April 20 as the recipient of a court injunction to prevent details of his private life from being disclosed.
The Times said Gray had been granted the injunction in October to "prevent disclosure of private information by a woman."
Gray was named along with numerous sportsmen, actors and others who had over the last 12 months resorted to the growing trend here of using a court injunction to protect their privacy.
A spokesperson for the MoD was unable to confirm the Times information in the time available before this story went to press.
Defense News
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