Interim Regulatory Economics and Policy Advisor

Tender description

On 3 September 2018 water companies will submit their business plans to Ofwat for the initial assessment of business plans (IAP) as part of the PR19 price review. We are intending to do a practice run of this assessment process in June 2018 (the "red run"). This will require mock ups of business plans and potentially some scenarios, which could take the form of partial business plans, for the red run to review. The objective of the red run is to: • test and provide some assurance of both the policy and processes, including data submission and quality assurance process in the IAP; • the red run should do this for all levels of the decision making process - data submission, policy teams, senior responsible officers (SROs) and Ofwat Board; • ensure that everyone in the PR19 team understands their roles and responsibilities during the IAP; • identify areas for improvement; and • recommend solutions to any problems or weaknesses. The purpose of this role is to assist the red run business plan team in developing these mock business plans and scenarios. The successful candidate will need to provide expert economic advice on how to construct the mock business plans and scenarios in order to best test our processes and policy for the implementation of the IAP. This will include answering questions posed by Ofwat staff during the red run review of the mock business plans. The successful candidate will also contribute to the lessons learnt exercise by providing written views on how the mock business plans could be best assessed to meet the objectives of the initial assessment of business plans. This will need to be completed before 31 May. This is key to ensure that we can learn as much as possible from the red run to improve our process and policy approach for the actual initial assessment of business plans. Key responsibility and outputs The successful candidate will be responsible for developing our thinking on, and material for the red run to best meet the objective of the red run, set out above. The key outputs and activities for this role are: - Advising on what should be included in the red run to test the initial assessment of business plans process most effectively. - Developing the thinking for, and drafting some parts of the red run material. o This will include parts of the 2-3 complete, but mock up, business plans. o It may also include a small number of additional scenarios relating to individual parts of business plans. - Contributing to the red run review / lessons learnt exercise, including advising on how the process could be improved. The candidate will work as part of an inter-disciplinary team of economists, engineers and accountants in Ofwat. The successful candidate will provide thought leadership and advice, but will not be required to fill a management role.