Reporting UK Non-Nuclear Radioactive Discharges as Required Under the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (the OSPAR Convention)

Tender description

BEIS is looking for a contractor or contractors to gather UK non-nuclear radioactive discharges data and then write an official report on behalf of UK government for submission to an international audience. The gathered data must be analysed and processed into reporting templates (this entails the application of good data management practices (data quality checking, data verification and data sorting) as well as identifying whether discharges can reach an OSPAR maritime region). The UK is a Contracting Party of the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (the OSPAR Convention). Under the OSPAR Convention the UK is obliged to submit data from the non-nuclear sector (and nuclear sector but this is dealt with separately) on an annual basis. This requirement is contained within the OSPAR Radioactive Substances Strategy where it commits the OSPAR Commission to annually collect data on discharges from the non-nuclear sector. The UK is signed up to the Radioactive Substances Strategy (valid until 2020, a new Strategy will be agreed for beyond) and so regular reporting is required in order to review progress towards the targets of the Radioactive Substances Strategy. Description: The proposed task is to provide the UK annual report of the non-nuclear sector discharges for submission to OSPAR. To do this, it will be necessary for the contractor to follow the OSPAR reporting procedures for non-nuclear reporting at this link https://www.ospar.org/work-areas/rsc/other/reporting-formats. Key steps towards achieving this are: • Gather data from the annual returns from authorised non-nuclear premises. Information will also be provided from BEIS for oil and gas industry • The gathered data then needs to be: o reviewed and checked for quality o filtered into the appropriate sectors and categories o analysed to identify discharges at reportable levels to OSPAR regions o analysed for any trends over the years • Submit the completed OSPAR report to BEIS who will then officially submit the Report to OSPA • Throughout the process present progress to the BEIS project management as agreed