External support for the assessment of draft water resource management plans

Water Resource Management Plans (WRMP) will be released for public consultation in January 2018 for English companies and March 2018 for Welsh companies. We will need to provide our responses within the 12 week statutory timeline.

This work will consist of a desk based review of each companies draft WRMP and supporting documentation to support the development of Ofwat's response to the statutory consultation. The Contractor will have access to our findings from pre-consultation to help prioritise resources. The review will be carried out using a proportionate and risk based approach. We expect this to take the form of a layer assessment process, with core questions - common across all companies, but with additional layers for medium and high risk companies. Our initial view is that we expect:

3-6 WRMPs to be high risk;

3-6 WRMPs to be medium risk; and

The rest to be low risk (including WRMPs for new appointees (NAVs))

We expect the tenders received to reflect these estimates but Contractors should include how they would revise their approach to a company's draft WRMP as the review progressed.

To ensure consistency in assessment we expect a structured evaluation template to be developed. This will be developed together with our team prior to receiving the first draft WRMPs early in January 2018. We expect it will likely include:

assessment of the approach and methods used to prepare their plan - is it credible and robust

assessment of the need - the supply-...mpanying analysis we will review the information and compose our response which will either be in the form of:

submission of the report alongside a covering letter explaining the nature and context of our response; or

use of the report to develop a short response that outlines any significant concerns and/or positives with the draft WRMP and also explains the nature and context of our response.

This work will require the Contractor to undertake detailed research and analysis, working closely with and under the direction of our project team. We expect the Contractor to assist the project team in preparing internal and potentially external briefing papers or presentations relating to the work in scope as required, usually aligned to the key tasks.

The Contractor is not expected to present to external stakeholders or act on our behalf with stakeholders. Any internal or external presentation of the assessment will remain with us, but the Contractor may be required to contribute where necessary.

We also expect the Contractor to upskill our internal staff through the work on WRMPs. The Contractor should set out in its tender submissions how it intends to deliver upskilling. Alongside this we request proposals, outlined in further detail below, for contractors to provide a debriefing session for the wider Ofwat price review team covering the areas within the scope of work and highlighting key links to PR19. We expect this would take place near the end of the contract