Contract for the supply of Chemical Security and Resilience Project

BEIS are delivering a programme to improve the security of the chemicals critical national infrastructure sector to enable BEIS to meet its obligation as Lead Government Department.

This includes identifying risk areas and mitigation strategies, working with technical authorities, and building collaborative relationships with industry to support delivery.

This project will focus on supporting the BEIS Chemicals Team to carry out risk and vulnerability assessments for the sector and support the development of mitigation strategies, ensuring these are set within the context of the operating model of the sector, and are informed by the experience and knowledge of the chemicals industry. The supplier will also advise on other priority projects as required, including on-boarding newly designated CNI sites, and criticalities work.

Additional information: The Chemical Industries Association (CIA) works with a range of businesses across the UK sector, and the majority of the operators of key sensitive sites that will be the focus of this project. The organisation also provides specialist technical advice for the sector on key areas including on operation of large chemical plants, which BEIS does not have specialist in-house expertise. The CIA have a unique and deep knowledge of the sector and its security and resilience issues.

The BEIS Chemicals Team require specialist expert technical and corporate knowledge, which CIA provide, to build security resilience in the UK chemicals sector to manage and maintain effective emergency planning strategy and disaster management. The project also supports and delivers benefit to industry, by ensuring a consistent risk assessment approach to identifying, prioritising and mitigating security risks. Understanding security breaches in physical, personnel and cyber vulnerabilities at Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) chemical plants is security sensitive and requires niche expertise to assess and manage the impact of malicious attack on toxic gas dispersion.