Northamptonshire County Council - Ox-Cam Property Flood Resilience Pathfinder - Project Evaluation

Northamptonshire County Council, in partnership with other Lead Local Flood Authorities throughout the Oxford to Cambridge Arc, were successful in securing funding from the Environment Agency to deliver the Ox-Cam Property Flood Resilience Pathfinder (PFR) Project; one of three national Pathfinders. This Request for Quotation is seeking the services of a Project-Level Evaluator to evaluate the project against the activities set out in the RfQ Document. The aim of the Pathfinder project is to enhance future take-up of flood resilience techniques in properties and to influence the industry to incorporate PFR as business as usual. The pathfinders will carry out a varied and complex program of work, targeting a range of actors, seeking outcomes and impacts related to commercial processes as well as behaviour change and physical changes to buildings. The evaluation will provide evidence about what in this complex picture matters most in achieving this aim. The evidence gathered will inform future property level resilience interventions and provide the potential to roll out the successful concepts. The purpose of the Evaluation is to baseline the current level of resilience up-take within 10 communities in the Ox-Cam PFR Pathfinder Project and local businesses, monitor delivery, measure how effective the range of pathfinder activities have been, to assess the outcomes and impacts of the project and ensure that learning from the different approaches is collected and shared. There are three Pathifnder projects being delivered nationally and the Environment Agency has procured the services of a Programme/Strategic-Level Evaluator who will work with the Project-Level Evaluators to ensure key measures and learning are captured across all three Projects. The difference between the Strategic Programme-Level Evaluation and Project-Level Evaluation is detailed below: Project-level Evaluation Each of the three Pathfinder’s will be expected to appoint an Independent project-level evaluator to evaluate their individual project against the activities set out above. The individual Project-Level evaluators should be able to clearly demonstrate how the Pathfinders have achieved the project’s aim and objectives The project-level evaluator will carry out the baseline data collection exercises (at the beginning and end of the project) on behalf of the strategic programme-level evaluators as well as any other necessary information and data required for the Strategic Programme-level evaluation process. The baseline questions will be designed by the Strategic Programme-level evaluators in partnership with the project level evaluators. This is to ensure that consistent information and data is collected across the programme from each of the Pathfinders. The project-level evaluators will also monitor and evaluate the local project activities and provide the required reporting outputs for the project. Programme / Strategic- level Evaluation The Strategic Evaluator will be engaged by the Environment Agency and will work closely with each of the three Project-level evaluators and the wider Pathfinder team(s) throughout the course of the project. They will develop the evaluation framework, including the baseline data/evaluation metrics needed to capture the outcomes and learning from the three Pathfinder projects. They will evaluate the effectiveness of all three pathfinder projects and gain an understanding about what has worked where, with whom and why. They will evaluate the outcomes and impacts of the entire programme based on a ‘theory of change’ approach. They will also use the data collected by the project-level evaluators and use the learning from the three pathfinder projects to evaluating value for money and project replicability. Where project legacy has been created, this will be documented and case studies and practical guides that will help others to apply the learning gained will also be developed by the Strategic evaluators .This Strategic evaluation will help Defra, the EA, RMAs and others understand what works best when encouraging the uptake of PFR.