Can you prove the supply chain behind this bid or build-rate commitment will hold?
From inside your own programme you see your tier-1. You can’t see the sub-tier house — a casting, a forging, a special process — that more of the bid quietly depends on than anyone has counted, the one that turns a win into a programme you can’t deliver to rate.
Settled as the Bid Evidence PackEvery bid is priced on the supply chain you can see. The risk lives in the one you can’t — a shared sub-tier sole-source, a forging order book that won’t arrive to rate, a part that fails the accreditation or export test the prime now runs. Win on a chain that can’t carry it, and the problem is yours to own.
Whether the chain behind the bid can carry it.
Typical reader: a capture lead or programme director.
The work is being placed — and the supply base is stretched.
A record civil order book of more than 15,000 aircraft is straining castings, forgings and special-process capacity, while £8.6bn of new combat-air work (the Defence Investment Plan, 30 June 2026) and the first GCAP joint contract through the Edgewing joint venture (2 April 2026) land on the same suppliers. As the work concentrates, a hidden dependency can cost you the bid — or the delivery. See what changed →