All roads lead to Farnborough

 
Farnborough Aerospace Consortium (FAC) is a not-for-profit trade association acting as a facilitator of business between large global primes and the supply chain and as an enabler of business support to its members and partners. It is one of the largest and most established aerospace and defence associations in the UK, providing support to, and furthering the long-term strategic growth of the sector in the South East of England. The National Aerospace Technology Exploitation Programme (NATEP) is a Government funded programme to stimulate innovation in the aerospace supply chain and thereby sustain and create jobs. The programme is supported by the leading aerospace OEMs and tier 1s including Airbus, Rolls-Royce, Bombardier, Finmeccanica, GE, GKN and Spirit. The programme is supported by the UK's regional aerospace alliances, therefore in the South East of England NATEP is supported by FAC. <In it to win it> The Farnborough International Airshow is a unique opportunity for FAC to promote its members, and the NATEP opportunity, to a large, international, aerospace community. FAC has a long history of taking a large stand at the show and giving its members the opportunity to exhibit where they otherwise might not be able to do so. This year is no exception and to exploit this opportunity to the full, FAC has a stand of 175m² in the prestigious hall 1 making up part of the UK pavilion. All the booths and pods on the stand were quickly sold to members and many more have taken up the opportunity to market their company using our graphics packages. The stand has a fully manned reception desk and a large bookable meeting space. FAC is a well-known brand internationally, and so attracts most of the trade delegations that attend the show. This provides excellent international exposure to our members and valuable export opportunities. FAC uses the show to promote the benefits of FAC membership. These include opportunities to network with colleagues and other members at regular FAC events; organised site visits to prime contractors and OEMs; the promotion of capabilities through FAC's UKADCAP website and monthly e-Newsletters; participation at events and exhibitions such as the Farnborough Airshow; and training including help to become SC21 accredited. This is so successful that FAC membership rises by approximately 15% in August following the show. <Look to the future> This year FAC will also take the opportunity to publicise NATEP with a dedicated booth on the FAC stand. The UK aerospace sector is the second largest in the world and the largest in Europe. To sustain and grow this position it is important that the UK supply chain is ready and able to support the manufacturing and servicing of the aircraft of the future as well as maintaining and servicing the current fleets. To this end, the Government has pledged £23 million funding over a three and a half year period. The aim is to support at least 100 projects and create or safeguard 1,200 jobs. NATEP supports the Aerospace Growth Partnership (AGP) strategy of developing new technology, increasing the manufacturing base and encouraging innovation in the supply chain. However unlike the AGP, NATEP covers defence as well as civil projects. The programme is managed by the national aerospace body ADS and funded by the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) as part of the Advanced Manufacturing Supply Chain Initiative (AMSCI) which is administered by Birmingham City Council. The NATEP programme is based on ATEP which was run by the Midlands Aerospace Alliance over six years and successfully funded 11 projects. One of the key components of this success is that the programme requires that each project includes an end user to pull through appropriate technology from the supply chain. The end user will provide a route to exploitation and therefore a high probability that the project will be successful. To apply for NATEP funding you must have an innovative project of technology readiness level (TRL) 4-6, supported by an end user that does not receive a grant, and a consortium of at least two grant receiving SMEs. Grants are up to a maximum of 50% of spend and are typically between £50,000 and £150,000 with duration of 18 months. Application is a two-stage process. Initially you complete an outline proposal which is reviewed by a regional advisory panel, and then a full proposal is prepared which builds on the outline proposal. When the full proposal is reviewed by the regional advisory panel each consortium gets a chance to present their project followed by a question and answer session. The Regional Advisory panels are put together by the regional aerospace alliances and contain representatives from local industry, academia and high value manufacturing catapult centres. One of the unique features of NATEP is that you are supported throughout this process by a mentor from your local aerospace alliance. The mentor is also present at the regional advisory panel meetings and will feed back comments from those meetings. If a project gets through the full proposal stage it is then reviewed by the National Steering Board (NSB) which contains Government, industry, Catapult Centre and Birmingham City Council Representatives. The ADS programme manager also sits on the NSB. <All join together> The application process is deliberately kept as simple as possible because it is recognised that SMEs often do not have the time or resources to go through a long and complicated application process. To decide whether you have a suitable project it is worth thinking through the following questions. What are our products? What new ideas are we working on? What are our customers asking for that we are currently unable to supply? Which end users could we approach to support the project? Could we manage if the project is 50% funded – could we support the other 50% ourselves? Under State Aid Rules the Government can only provide 50% funding and this funding is paid quarterly in arrears based on actual spend. Over the time that the NATEP programme will run there are five calls for proposals. The current status is that the first call has run through its application process and resulted in five successful applications which are all about to start. The call for Outline Applications for the second call closed on the 20th March 2014. The second call elicited 50 Outline proposals, it is expected that about 25 of these will receive funding and start in August or September this year. The proposals came from consortia with companies from all over the UK. The next call for Outline Proposals will be on the 22nd August 2014. The Farnborough Airshow will be used to publicise the programme and encourage proposals for Call 3 in August and future calls. FAC members are heavily represented in the Call 1 and Call 2 proposals from consortia in the South East of England. FAC is hoping that the promotion of NATEP at the airshow will help identify possible end users (which can come from anywhere in the world) and innovative SMEs from around the UK. www.fac.org.uk