Quality Assurance of Excel based Energy and Emissions Projections Model

Tender description

Quality Assurance of Excel based Energy and Emissions Projections Model. Full details of the contract requirements are given in the attached ITT. The Energy and Emissions Projections (EEP) is an annual DECC publication involving complex modelling. The modelling analyses and projects future energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in the UK. These projections allow us to monitor progress towards meeting the UK’s carbon budgets and are used to inform energy policy and associated analytical work across government departments. It is one of DECC’s business critical models, as the projections are used extensively to inform policy and analysis, and provide consistency in analysis and valuation of policy across Whitehall. The modelling is done in Excel using 38 different workbooks, which individually model different sectors and fuels. Work has recently been carried out to update these workbooks.The purpose of this work is to use the DECC QA guidance (available to view at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-of-energy-climate-change/about/procurement#analytical-modelling) to review all 38 spreadsheets and help improve our confidence in them. Further detail on the spreadsheets is given in the attached ITT. The work will involve three stages. 1) Reading and understanding our guidance (link above) and the tools we use to review Microsoft Excel Spreadsheets. 2) Working through the EEP files systematically, identifying issues within them. 3) Communicating these issues and their degree of seriousness to the DECC project team, agreeing the corrective actions that need to be taken, and summarising the status of the model in the DECC QA log format The type of issues that will need to be identified and corrected will range from errors within formulae, to poor best-practice, such as units not being included in tables or formulae containing hard-coded numbers. If time is limited, actual errors will need to be prioritised over best practice issues. There is no requirement to review the methodology within the model, as this has already been done as part of the development.