Research and development services and related consultancy services

Tender description

Research and development services and related consultancy services. Research and experimental development services. Research services. Research and development consultancy services. Research consultancy services. Social research services. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (‘DECC’) wishes to appoint a contractor to undertake the annual Fuel Poverty Modelling for England. The purpose of the project is to enable the department to produce annual fuel poverty National Statistics on the number of households in fuel poverty based on the Low Income High Cost (LIHC) definition, the associated fuel poverty gap and the new Government target based on the fuel poverty energy efficiency rating of a household. The supplier will deliver the baseline annual fuel poverty datasets. This includes using information from various national datasets about household characteristics to model: (a) the fuel consumption the household requires to maintain an adequate standard of warmth and meet other basic energy needs; (b) fuel prices for each household; (c) the full income of all the household members; and (d) creation of key variable flags and simulated Policy impacts, which are not available directly from the English Housing Surveys (EHS). The supplier is expected to fully quality assure and document all data validation, assumptions, processing and analysis to National Statistics standards and should be made available to the department for quality assurance purposes. In addition, the contract also includes undertaking specified fuel poverty analysis, such as the provision of sub-national estimates of fuel poverty, uncertainty analysis and methodological development and testing. We are looking for a collaborative partner who will bring both statistical and energy modelling expertise along with an understanding of Government energy policy to successfully deliver the annual Fuel Poverty Modelling contract, which forms part of a National Statistics time-series for England. Consortium bids are welcomed. The contract will be made up of 5 key components with specific deliverables as listed in the specification. The bid should be disaggregated by component, and for each component, the raw data that is extracted, validated and adapted for use in the fuel poverty modelling should be fully documented and quality assured as part of the process. The primary data source for the Fuel Poverty Modelling is the English Housing Survey (EHS) but includes other Official sources. In brief, the 5 components include: — Modelling the energy requirement for each household in the EHS, using a BREDEM model (or equivalent. — Modelling the fuel prices for each household using annual EHS and National Fuel Prices data. — Modelling the full income of all household members in the EHS. — Derivation of household level fuel poverty datasets and documentation detailing each of the above components along with fuel poverty levels and the associated fuel poverty gap, further split by key policy, socio-demographic and housing characteristics. — Project management including regular update meetings with the Department and any overheads. For each component, all data validation, assumptions, processing and code should be logged and made available to the department for quality assurance purposes. The contract must remain sufficiently flexible so that it reacts to changes in either the methodology of the fuel poverty modelling, the EHS, or both. A section of the budget will need to be retained for unplanned important work that DECC deem important and needs to be carried out by the contractor. To ensure that potential bidders have opportunity to seek further clarification of our requirements for this contract, the department will respond to all questions electronically, uploading Q&A via the OJEU portal. Any questions submitted within 24 hours of the tender deadline will not be answered. For background information, the full specification and further information on this project please see the ITT.