Professor Merfyn Lloyd

Merfyn Lloyd is a systems thinker and systems architect whose expertise lies in the development and management of complex socio-technical systems. A former civil service scientist and army officer, his experience lies chiefly in the defence and security sectors.

He is the Managing Director of De Rete Ltd, a company he established after retiring from the UK Ministry of Defence in April 2015. De Rete’s intent is to provide independent advice and support to both the UK MOD and industry, to encourage open innovation amongst the defence community and more widely, and, in particular, to support small and medium enterprises (SMEs).  

Before retiring, he spent 8 years as the Science Advisor to the Chief of Materiel (Land) in Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) on secondment from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL).  During this period, he was responsible for the development and implementation of the Land Open System Architecture (LOSA) programme. With a small team and working closely with UK defence industry colleagues, this introduced generic technical architectures based on open standards to the Land Environment. These are being implemented in UK Ministry of Defence projects and are being adopted more widely by NATO countries and elsewhere.

He is a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET) and the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). He was awarded the OBE in 2001.