Delivery Partner in Support for Ofwat's Price Review 2019

Tender description

To help deliver PR19, we are seeking a Delivery Partner who will work collaboratively with us to provide support, analysis, advice, and knowledge sharing. We expect the Delivery Partner will have the capacity and capability to deliver under Ofwat's strategic direction, providing skills and expertise, in particular, to support peaks in our workload that we require for a fixed period of time. At a high level, the Delivery Partner will be required to: - have a working knowledge of the full range of issues arising in the context of price reviews in the water or wider utility sector, - exercise sound judgment in supporting Ofwat in PR19, with appropriate checks and assurance - exercise sound judgment in supporting Ofwat in PR19, with appropriate checks and assurance, - have sufficient resource with requisite skills and capabilities to support PR19, - work in accordance with our values and the partnership principles in the contract, - flexibly manage resources and deal with uncertainty and change, - support our learning environment by sharing knowledge, - manage the delivery of services at a capped price, - have appropriate arrangements to protect our information, and, - manage effectively any actual/perceived conflicts of interest. Key disciplines: We require the following skillsets: - regulatory economics, - engineering, - corporate finance and tax, - financial and cost modeling support. We expect the work to involve assistance with the initial assessment of company business plans (as defined in the PR19 final methodology) and our draft and final determinations. This includes but is not limited to: - providing regulatory policy advice, e.g. assessment of customer perspectives, outcomes, affordability, resilience, board assurance, and the role of innovation, - assessing efficient costs through economic cost modeling, - engineering advice and value for money assessment of proposals for expenditure in company business plans, - providing regulatory economics advice, e.g. incentive design, - advising on the cost of capital and assessing financeability of companies, and, - operating financial models and data capture from company submissions. Contract: - estimated contract start is May 2018, to allow the Delivery Partner to be involved in the development of processes and assurances before submission of company business plans in September 2018, - the contract will then run until final determinations in December 2019, with a period of knowledge transfer and, if necessary, support for Ofwat in the event of any appeals to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) on final determinations. - within the contract, we plan to use an incentive mechanism to encourage the Delivery Partner to commit to the overall success of PR19 and meet agreed standards of performance.