Unit A, Castle Court
Bodmin Rd, Wyken
Coventry
CV2 5DB
Bodmin Rd, Wyken
Coventry
CV2 5DB
Uniform procurement is often treated as a logistics exercise, for example: specify the garment, meet the standard then place the order. At Murray Uniforms (a JOSCAR accredited uniform supplier) we’ve spent over 100 years building a different approach. One which is grounded in behavioural research and wearer insight, which we call The Science of Uniform® . It’s a methodology that treats what people wear to work as a driver of engagement, comfort and performance, not just compliance.
We’re proud to now hold JOSCAR accreditation. The shared assurance standard used across the defence and aerospace supply chain to verify that suppliers meet the security, compliance and governance requirements defence organisations require before they’ll even open a conversation. It’s the starting point for a conversation we want to have properly: what does evidence-led uniform design actually look like when the wearer is operating in a high-security or mission-critical environment?
JOSCAR, the Joint Supply Chain Accreditation Register is the shared supplier-assurance platform used across the UK’s defence, aerospace and security sectors, run by Hellios on behalf of more than 30 buying organisations, among them BAE Systems, Leonardo, QinetiQ, Babcock, Rolls-Royce Submarines and Thales. It’s the register those organisations use to vet suppliers before a tender conversation even starts.
Registering isn’t a form to fill in once. Suppliers are assessed against a standard covering information security, financial standing and business ethics, health, safety and environmental practice, anti-bribery and anti-corruption controls, counterfeit-material policy, and product quality and safety. The same due-diligence bar every one of JOSCAR’s 6,000-plus registered suppliers has had to clear, reassessed on an ongoing basis rather than signed off once and forgotten.
That matters to us for a practical reason. It means a defence procurement team we speak to doesn’t have to start from zero verifying who we are and how we operate as that groundwork is already done. The conversation can start with the uniform problem itself.
The Science of Uniform® methodology has been shaped through industry research with Coventry University and proven out in demanding industrial settings. This includes our work with Jaguar Land Rover, BMW etc. The common thread across that work is that uniform decisions made with real wearer data, not assumption and not aesthetics alone, measurably improve how people feel about their role, and how they perform in it.
That’s the thinking we want to bring to defence. Not by assuming a manufacturing environment and a defence environment need the same things wrapped in different colours, but by asking what changes when the operating context does.
There are several considerations we think are worth evaluating properly:
Operational and environmental demands. Defence roles span control rooms, austere field environments and everything between. A wearer-research approach has to account for that range from the outset, not retrofit a manufacturing solution afterwards.
Wearer engagement in high-security and mission-critical roles. Our standard research process involves talking directly to the people who’ll wear the uniform. In defence and security contexts, that process itself has to adapt; different access constraints, different ways of gathering honest feedback, different stakeholders who need to be in the room.
Resilience, durability and specialist performance requirements. Thermal performance, flame resistance, durability under sustained wear and integration with specialist PPE aren’t add-ons in defence uniform design, they’re foundational. Evidence-led design means testing and validating against those requirements from the start, not styling around them later.
A wider stakeholder group. Uniform decisions in defence rarely sit with one buyer. Procurement, health and safety, and security functions all have a legitimate stake in the outcome. A methodology that’s genuinely evidence-led has to be built to bring all of them along, not just the person signing the PO.
Impact beyond compliance. The strongest case for evidence-led uniform design isn’t “it looks smarter.” It’s the link between how people feel in what they wear and outcomes that matter operationally; comfort over long shifts, confidence in role and the kind of workforce engagement that affects recruitment and retention. That’s the case we’ve built in other sectors, and it’s the case we believe holds in defence too.
JOSCAR membership gives us a verified, trusted place in the defence supply chain. The Science of Uniform® gives us something rarer still: a methodology built on evidence rather than assumption, already proven in demanding, safety-critical environments, and shaped from the outset to answer the operational, security and wearer-engagement questions defence organisations actually ask. That’s the combination we bring to the table: a partner who understands what evidence-led uniform design has to look like in this sector, and is ready to build it with you.
If you’re responsible for uniform or workwear procurement within a defence or security organisation and want to talk through what an evidence-led approach could look like for your workforce, get in touch today and Speak to our Uniform Specialists.
