Quality Assurance and Redevelopment of UK TIMES Industry Input Spreadsheets

DECC is looking for a contractor or contractors to:

•carry out a partial formula audit; and,

•reconstruct a set of Microsoft Excel work books

using DECC standard model quality assurance guidance and spreadsheet template

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/quality-assurance-tools-and-guidance-in-decc.

The workbooks are known as “backing sheets”. They calculate a set of input parameters for eight sectors of a whole system energy model built in the TIMES software. N.B there is no requirement for the contractor to be familiar with this software.

The final output of the project will be a set of reconfigured work books that:

•are structured according to agreed best-practice, following key principles such as high levels of transparency and easy traceability;

•contain as few workbooks and worksheets as possible but no fewer;

•are well documented, with:

oin-model documentation (N.B. high level documentation describing the structure of the model will be supplied) of each of the calculations and assumptions (with sources) in the input work books; oinput variables identified and referenced; and,

•include the facility for ranges for the most “important” variables - for uncertainty analysis.

The existing work book structure is complex for each sector there are many interlinked work books. There are approximately 285 work books. The complexity of each sector varies.

The table below shows approximate numbers of equations in each of the sectorial models.

Agriculture324

Electricity1899

Industry5513

Processes1634

Residential4115

Resources733

Services2814

Transport6406

For background information, the full specification and further information on this project please see the ITT.

The successful bidder will need project management expertise to deliver the evaluation, in particular because a significant proportion of the core funding for this project is allocated to the financial year 2014-15. Break points will be built into the contract.