Evaluation of Full Submissions for Electricity and/or Gas Network Innovation Competitions

The appointed consultancy firm(s) shall provide expertise on technical questions arising from the review of the Network Innovation Competition (NIC) Full Submissions submitted to Ofgem by the network companies. Their nominated consultants shall support the NICs' Independent Expert Panel (EP), which makes recommendations to Ofgem on which of the submissions to fund. There is one EP for the gas NIC, and one for the electricity NIC.

There are three key stages to the work for each Competition:

Stage 1:

• (i)The consultants shall produce, and present to the EP and Ofgem, a menu of potential issues that they consider from the network companies' Full Submissions warrant further investigation. The consultants will focus their review on several technically focused NIC criteria that will be pre-defined by Ofgem.
• (ii)Based on the menu of issues, and any additional issues deemed appropriate, the consultants shall investigate those issues chosen by the EP and Ofgem as desirable for further interrogation in Stage 2 of the work.

Stage 2: The consultants shall investigate and provide written answers to the selected EP and Ofgem issues.

Stage 3: If any budget remains the EP, and Ofgem, may ask the consultants to undertake additional work e.g. reviewing further questions based on parts of any resubmitted Full Submissions.

Ofgem have chosen to issue a single ITT covering the requirement for both the Gas NIC and the Electricity NIC. However, a consultancy firm can tender to provide support to one, or both, competitions. A separate tender proposal for each Competition is requested for ease of evaluation.