GLA 82172 Accelerators- Successors Design and Procurement

<p><strong>COMMERCIAL SUPPORT FOR GLA WORK TO DELIVER THE NEXT PHASE OF ACCELERATORS</strong></p>
<p><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<ol>
<li><strong> </strong><strong>Introduction</strong></li>
</ol>
<p><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>The Mayor wants to make London a zero-carbon city by 2030, whilst protecting the most disadvantaged Londoners by tacking fuel poverty. Retrofitting London’s buildings and energy supply is vital to achieving this.</li>
<li>Given the substantial contribution buildings make to London’s overall carbon footprint, decarbonising the built environment is key to delivering on the Mayor’s target. The poor energy efficiency of London’s homes is also a key driver of high and rising levels of fuel poverty.</li>
<li>There are currently relatively few regulatory drivers to action, and limited government funding available to support this work. However, the 2008 Climate Change Act required an at least 80 per cent reduction in CO₂ emissions (compared to 1990 levels) for the whole of the UK. This has since been updated to 100% by 2050 and more action is needed to drive this agenda nationally.</li>
<li>The Mayor has a suite of Accelerator programmes to help deliver on this ambition and support individuals and organisations to go further faster. They have a number of commonalities:</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Technical advice and support</li>
<li>Some common delivery partners</li>
<li>Match-funding by ERDF
<ul>
<li>These programmes are currently all due to end between April-July 2023. This creates an opportunity to look at if and how they can be procured and delivered differently, including whether there is scope to bring them together.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ol start="2">
<li><strong> </strong><strong>Background on the current Accelerator programmes</strong></li>
</ol>
<p><strong><em>&nbsp;</em></strong></p>
<p><strong><em>Local Energy Accelerator</em></strong></p>
<ul>
<li>The Mayor’s £6m Local Energy Accelerator (LEA) Programme aims to transform the way London generates, supplies and uses clean local energy in buildings and transport. Through the LEA, public and private organisations can apply for funded expertise and project support to bring their clean and flexible energy projects into operation. This will contribute significantly to the Mayor’s 2030 commitment and clean energy objectives (reducing carbon, energy bills and fuel poverty) whilst increasing jobs.</li>
<li>The LEA, which will operate to July 2023, provides public and private sector organisations with end-to-end technical, commercial and financial and project management expertise and project support through a framework of expert consultancies alongside a free-of-charge external Programme Delivery Unit (delivered by Buro Happold, Turner &amp; Townsend and Camargue).</li>
</ul>
<p><strong><em>Retrofit Accelerator – Homes</em></strong></p>
<p><u>Overview</u></p>
<ul>
<li>The Retrofit Accelerator – Homes (RA-H) provides revenue-funded technical advice and support to the social housing sector. It also has a wider strategic ambition to help build the supply chain and support the growth in green jobs.</li>
<li>RA-H helps housing providers take a ‘whole-house approach’ – identifying a range of measures based on the needs of each home. This increased focus on supporting housing providers to deliver deeper retrofitting aims to achieve greater occupant benefits including lower energy bills, greater comfort and improved health and wellbeing, in addition to greatly reduced carbon emissions. The technical assistance provided by RA-H comprises three key workstreams:</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>support for social housing providers within RA-H Innovation Partnership (RAH-IP)</li>
<li>supporting whole-house retrofits outside RA-HIP</li>
<li>wider capacity-building</li>
</ul>
<p><u>Support for social housing providers within RA-HIP</u></p>
<p><u>&nbsp;</u></p>
<ul>
<li>RA-HIP was launched in summer 2021 and connects social housing providers and solution providers (building firms) to build a retrofit pipeline; grow and strengthen the retrofit supply chain; and drive down the costs of whole-house retrofit. Four solution providers were selected following a procurement process and have entered into contracts with seven London-based social housing providers to develop a retrofit pipeline. After the three-year partnership a national framework for delivering retrofit projects will be launched. This framework has a potential value of £10bn, equivalent to up to 190,000 retrofitted homes, which would create around 150,000 jobs over a decade.</li>
<li>The technical assistance provided to the social housing providers within RA-HIP includes support around key delivery issues including design; costs; planning issues; resident engagement and buy-in; recruitment; and contracts. In addition, social housing providers are supported to secure further capital funding for delivery and collaborate with each other and with solution providers through the RA-H Collaboration Hub, established in 2021.</li>
</ul>
<p><u>Supporting whole-house retrofits outside RA-HIP</u></p>
<ul>
<li>RA-H is currently providing technical assistance for the delivery of Treadgold House in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, the UK’s first Energiesprong net-zero retrofit of a block of flats. This is currently the only additional housing provider being supported through RA-H that is not part of RA-HIP.</li>
</ul>
<p><u>Wider capacity-building workstream</u></p>
<ul>
<li>This workstream, launched in July 2022, recognises that to move at the scale and pace required to reach net-zero, London’s social housing providers will need to move to a future state where functions within the organisations are working in harmony to remove barriers and maximise market opportunities to decarbonise social housing stock. The capacity-building workstream will lay the foundations for a model that can facilitate this transformational change, working through three stages:</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>analysis of the support needed through engagement with a wide range of social housing providers using a capability assessment tool</li>
<li>designing and developing a programme of group support based on themes identified through the analysis</li>
<li>delivery of a programme of workshops to bring senior stakeholders from London’s housing providers to understand common issues and potential solutions.
<ul>
<li>In addition to providing wider support to more of London’s social housing providers than are currently supported through RA-H, this workstream will help the GLA to understand the wider needs of London’s social housing providers. This will inform future work on domestic retrofit in London and the shape of the next phase of RA-H.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p><strong><em>Retrofit Accelerator – Workplaces</em></strong></p>
<ul>
<li>The Retrofit Accelerator-Workplaces programme provides technical support in relation to carbon reduction and energy efficiency measures in a range of non-domestic public sector owned buildings including offices, hospitals and schools. The project is jointly funded by the Mayor of London and the European Regional Development Fund.</li>
<li>The programme was formerly known as RE:FIT London, and started in 2009 it not only reduces carbon emissions but also results in large guaranteed energy savings for the public sector.</li>
<li>The Accelerator helps a range of organisations including London boroughs, NHS bodies, central government departments, schools and other educational establishments, and cultural and heritage organisations to implement retrofit projects. It does this through fully funded access to:</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>the Programme Delivery Unit (PDU), an expert team providing free end-to-end support needed to get projects up, running and successfully implemented</li>
<li>the easy to use RE:FIT framework of energy service companies, which saves time and resources for organisations that are procuring retrofit services and works which - as an energy performance contracting framework - guarantees energy and cost savings.
<ul>
<li>The RE:FIT Framework is co-owned by the GLA and Local Partnerships and is in its 4th iteration. The current version of the framework has a total contract value of up to £500m and runs until February 2024. More details of the Framework can be found <a href="https://www.london.gov.uk/what-we-do/environment/energy/low-carbon-accelerators/retrofit-accelerator-workplaces/trusted-suppliers">here</a>.</li>
<li>The RA-W programme was due to end in September 2022, but an extension to the Activity End Date has been agreed with ERDF to 30 April 2023 to ensure the Key Performance Indicators can be met following delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<ol start="3">
<li><strong> </strong><strong>Outcomes of the work</strong></li>
</ol>
<p><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>This work is intended to support the GLA to:</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>Identify and evaluate options for future programme design</li>
<li>Develop a preferred option for design of the next stage of the programme to sufficient level of detail for GLA to procure it</li>
<li>Design and deliver an approach to procurement of the delivery organisation(s)</li>
<li>Support the procurement process</li>
<li>Offer flexibility and demonstrate value for money in the design of the next phase of the programme</li>
</ul>
<p><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<ol start="4">
<li><strong> </strong><strong>Scope of this work</strong></li>
</ol>
<p><strong>&nbsp;</strong></p>
<ul>
<li>This work is to provide programme and procurement design services over the length of the project procurement process, including the finalisation of the contract with the preferred bidder(s) and the contract mobilisation process.</li>
</ul>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ol start="5">
<li><strong> </strong><strong>Requirements for the contractor</strong></li>
</ol>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<ul>
<li>This piece is intended to be multi-disciplinary and we are looking for a bidder that is able to address the full scope of the work. To do this we recognise that it may be more appropriate for a consortium bid to be developed and we would welcome this.</li>
<li>The successful bidder will need to use their expertise and knowledge of:</li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li>UK energy system decarbonisation</li>
<li>stakeholder engagement, including familiarity with a range of approaches to capture and analyse feedback</li>
<li>programme design</li>
<li>procurement regulations</li>
<li>procurement design</li>
<li>commercial advice, assistance and support to public sector bodies
<ul>
<li>The bidder will need to support the GLA team taking this work forward and will need to be focused on the outputs, recognising activities might need to change from the scope to enable them to be met.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>This procurement is designed to procure an organisation or consortium to help design and procure the successors to the Mayor’s Retrofit Accelerators. Together these programmes provide technical advice and support to social housing providers and the public sector on how to decarbonise their programmes.<br>&nbsp;<br>There is a commercial conflict of interest in organisations designing the successor programmes and procurement, and then bidding to deliver the successor programmes. As such, the Greater London Authority will not accept bids from organisations for the successor programmes if they have bid for this piece of work.<br>&nbsp;</p>