Heriot-Watt Online at Heriot-Watt University is offering fully-funded, online CPD courses to those living or working in Scotland.
The Upskilling Scotland Scholarship is supported by the Scottish Government and provides access to free masters-level courses worth up to £1,400. Courses have been selected from some of our highest in-demand MSc and MBA programmes and provide practical skills and knowledge in critical business areas such as Sustainable Supply Chain Strategies, Data-driven Business Growth, Leading Business Transformation, Developing Strategy and Marketing for Business Success and Achieving Net Zero. They will also give learners a stepstone onto a full Masters programme should they wish to gain the full degree qualification.
If you’re looking for the next step to boost your career, find out more by visiting HERE.
The Supplier Development Programme will hold the 14th annual Meet the Buyer event on 17 May 2023 at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC), with headline partners The Scottish Government, Scotland Excel and the UK Department for Transport, and platinum sponsor Elcom.
This will be the first in-person national Meet the Buyer event since 2019 – and we are excited!
Aiming to bring together the length and breadth of the public sector under one roof all on one day, this free event will give Scottish businesses unprecedented access to buyers and decision makers from across the public and private sectors.
Businesses will be able to talk to key contractors and find out what tenders and projects they have in the pipeline for businesses for the supply of materials, goods, and services locally and nationally within Scotland and right across the UK.
In addition, sole traders and small businesses will have the opportunity to meet with larger trades and construction contractors that are connected to public sector projects. These primary contracts want to engage with local businesses to get into their supply chains and Community Wealth Building opportunities related to ‘project delivery on site’.
In an ever-expanding list, several Scottish local authorities are expected to exhibit, as well as regional and national organisations, like the Scottish Procurement Alliance and Strathclyde Partnership for Transport.
A full list of exhibitors can be viewed on the SDP website. Top tip: just click on a logo to learn what kind of suppliers each exhibitor particularly wants to engage with on the day!
Book Now
Businesses of all sizes, especially micro, small, and medium sized businesses and social enterprises, are eligible to attend Meet the Buyer 2023 for free, but must register in advance on the SDP website.
Right now, many businesses are looking to save energy, cut bills and reduce their carbon footprint. Lighting is a great place for them to start. For most businesses in Scotland, lighting makes up a significant chunk of energy costs. The good news is that by upgrading to modern lighting, such as LEDs, they can make big savings. The free and impartial advice that Business Energy Scotland provides is designed to help small and medium sized enterprises quickly make the switch.
What’s more, the Scottish Government’s SME Loan Scheme is currently offering eligible SMEs, including charities, interest free loans with cashback grants of up to £20,000 to upgrade to energy efficient lighting.
The new lighting fast track assessment provides free and impartial advice so businesses can take advantage of government funding and quickly make the switch to energy efficient lighting.
The Defence and Security Accelerator (DASA) is pleased to launch a new Themed Competition, Human Augmentation. With funding provided by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL) Human Augmentation Science and Technology (S&T) project, this competition aims to develop novel, Generation-After-Next (GAN) prototype HA technologies which can be harnessed safely and ethically and can help mitigate human performance as the limiting factor in a UK Defence environment.
In Short:
• Up to £2 million is available for this competition, and DASA expects to fund 5 to 10 proposals.
• Submission deadline: midday on Tuesday 13 June 2023
This Themed Competition has 3 use cases:
• Use Case 1: Biofeedback Systems
Systems that measure user state, interpret the resulting data and deliver an effect based on the data.
• Use Case 2: The Warfighter Ensemble
Equipment that is worn closely on the body and is designed to optimise and enhance biological functions.
• Use Case 3: Sensory Enhancements
Enhancing the human senses beyond typical biological capability.
Do you have an innovation that may help accelerate the development of human augmentation technologies for defence and military effect delivery?
Learn more and submit a proposal here
This month, we’re thrilled to welcome to our membership Braeside Retreats, Midgey Bites, esave Energy Consultants, Moray Firth Radio – Bauer Media we look forward to working with them all.
To discuss membership, please reach out to our Business Development manager, Fiona Levack. You can contact Fiona by email: fiona@caithnesschamber.com. You can read about membership on the website using this link.
If you’re already a member but would like a reminder of how to get the most from your membership, Fiona will gladly go over that with you too.
We have launched a new competition – Phase 3 of Intelligent ship. We have £1.7m to develop approaches to integrate collaborative AI systems with human operators and decision-makers to form complex human-autonomy teams (HATs). We aim to fund a single consortium project worth £1.7m. The competition closes at midday on 06 June and we have two sessions for one-to-one conversations with the technical team: 18 and 25 April. The full competition document which includes the Eventbrite links for the one-to-one sessions is here
If you have any questions about Intelligent ship Phase 3, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Many kind regards,
DASA Scotland
Deb (djcarr@dasa.mod.gov.uk) – Innovation Partner
Linda (lgalloway@dasa.mod.gov.uk) – Innovation Partner
Anis (amourad@dasa.mod.gov.uk) – Access to Mentoring and Finance Partner
Don’t forget to follow the new DASA Scotland LinkedIn page
We have two new DASA competitions to tell you about.
1. Using AI to Scope out the Grey Zone – closes midday 06 June
This competition is seeking novel ideas that explore Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR). There are three challenge areas
- Indicators and warnings – what is happening in the information environment?
- Intent and attribution – who is doing it and why?
- Courses of action – what can we do about it? (what sort of response options can we use technology to propose in the information environment)
Ideas should be for projects that are 6-months in length and finish at <TRL6. There is £800k of funding available and we expect to fund several projects of up to £300k.
We have a dial-in session on 25 April. Please register here
The full competition document is here
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/competition-scoping-out-the-grey-zone-sub-threshold-ai
2. Generation-after-next communications and networks – Phase 1 closes midday 31 May
This competition is quite different in format; it will have 4 phases (£6m in total) and these consist of two sets (A and B) of ‘discovery’ and ‘development’. Phase 1 (discovery A) has £1m of funding available and we expect to fund 8-10 projects. These projects will finish at TRL3/4 after a maximum of 6-months.
Phase 1 seeks proposals for innovative technologies for communications, networking and information services, with an emphasis on challenges specific to defence. There are nine challenges described in the full competition document which is here
We are having a dial-in session on 18 April, please book your place here
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/gan-communications-launch-webinar-tickets-600332760447
If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
DASA Scotland
Deb (djcarr@dasa.mod.gov.uk) Innovation Partner
Linda (lgalloway@dasa.mod.gov.uk) Innovation Partner
Anis (amourad@dasa.mod.gov.uk) Access to Mentoring and Finance Partner
Responding to the announcement that Humza Yousaf MSP has successfully become the new SNP leader and First Minister, Dr Liz Cameron CBE, Chief Executive, Scottish Chambers of Commerce, said:
“We congratulate Humza Yousaf on his successful campaign to become the new First Minister. We look forward to working closely with him to restore business confidence and investment, enabling the Scottish economy to drive forward.
“As we outlined to all the leadership candidates in our open letter last week, there are serious challenges in every sector across the economy. The cost of doing business, labour shortages, lagging infrastructure, are all drags on growth and investment. We urge Humza Yousaf to take a pro-business approach with a new cabinet, to help build a build a globally competitive economy and to truly back Scottish business.”
We have just launched a new £1m Themed Competition for dstl – Analysing and understanding audiences. This competition closes at midday 30 May. The full competition document is here
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/analysing-and-understanding-audiences
We have 15-minute dial-in sessions so that you can talk with the technical team about your ideas on 30 March and 04 April. These slots will fill soon so if you are interested register as soon as possible via the Eventbrite links in the competition document. This competition is focused on finding novel and innovative ideas at low levels of maturity (TRL1-4).
Successful projects will be a maximum of 6-months in length and will be funded to a maximum of £100k.
An audience-centric approach is key to Defence’s orchestration of military activities and understanding audiences forms a major part of this. Audiences can include individuals and groups, those who may be friendly, impartial or adversarial and this could be in peacetime or conflict. Audience analysis could be used to support Defence planning by supporting the identification of potential audiences of interest, providing a detailed understanding of audiences that are known to be of interest, and/or providing insights into factors that affect the understanding of specific audiences (e.g. cultural factors or unique audiences).
At this stage of the competition, we are limiting the scope to concepts, theoretical development, advancement and proof of concept research. This can include:
- approaches that are used outside of Defence and have the potential for application in a Defence context; and
- innovative ideas that apply to analysing and understanding audiences in general (and in turn could be applicable in a Defence context).
Areas of particular interest include:
| Product | Description |
| Audience Segmentation | Identifies the relevant audience segments/audiences for Defence activities, including pertinent information about their beliefs, habits, attitudes and behaviours |
| Behavioural Insight Assessment | Identify the priority behaviour drivers for the audience segments and the potential theories of change to apply for a required activity |
| Narrative Assessment | Key narratives and Disinformation, Misinformation, Malinformation and Information (DMMI) across and between the segments |
| Information Environment Assessment (IEA) | An assessment of how information is shared by audiences. It incorporates the virtual and physical dimensions of information sharing and includes an analysis of narratives and topics (information content) as well as dissemination routes and impact (information format) |
| Human Environment Assessment | Analysis of the human factors that affect the operating environment, PMESII is the common analytical framework to follow. (PMESII is political, military, economic, social, information and infrastructure) |
| Network Analysis | Identifies the connections between audiences/audience segments |
| Channel Analysis | Identifies the channels relevant to the audience segments (this will be dependent on findings from the Information Environment Assessment) |
| Information Packs | To inform the planning of activity to deliver a cognitive effect |
| Assessment Metrics | Identified metrics for monitoring change in an audience segment |
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to get in touch (note new email addresses although the old ones will automatically forward).
DASA Scotland
Deb (djcarr@dasa.mod.gov.uk) – Innovation Partner
Linda (lgalloway@dasa.mod.gov.uk) – Innovation Partner
Anis (amourad@dasa.mod.gov.uk) – Access to Mentoring and Finance Partner