Nick Willcox has been a key project leader and manager of most of the major UK MoD warship procurement of the last 25 years and has spent 5 years as the IPT Leader for frigates, supporting more than half the UK surface fleet. He has built and led the project management office which drove the successful delivery of the Vanguard submarine build programme. Through innovative estimating and negotiation, he broke the commercial deadlock in pricing the Astute submarine design and build programme prime contract and, having placed it, set up the MoD management arrangements. He set the PFI procurement strategy for Astute Training and placed the contract. He led the Frigates IPT, imbuing the approximately 100 strong team with a relentless focus on capability, availability and cost, to optimise the expenditure on support across his own and the equipment support teams to improve availability and reduce cost by 40% and to produce a rigorous justification for the T23 Capability Sustainment programme. He initiated the T26 Global Combat Ship procurement programme and has led the joint MoD BAE team through the concept design, development of a rigorously justified capability requirement and production of a contractible offer supported by fully competitive equipment procurement and rigorous cost and risk assessment. These achievements are based on a deep understanding of the detail of planning, costing, managing and accepting warship procurement and support from an early career spent refitting small ships in Rosyth and overseeing submarine construction at Barrow.
Listed skills include Leadership Of Major Engineering Programmes, Public Procurement, Naval Architecture, Engineering Programme Management, and 11 others.