The City Expert Support Facility (CESF), through NZC / Climate-KIC, is requesting a quotation for developing a guideline template that can be used for public tendering for the services of an Energy Service Company (ESCO) to realise energy renovations in the City of Leuven and by its partners. The primary target group for ESCO projects is the care homes sector, schools, and municipal buildings. Public tendering procedures will need to be followed, based on well-defined specifications, that these target groups have limited expertise and knowledge about.
About the request
The energy performance contract functions as a contractual framework for the implementation of a guaranteed energy cost savings. The executing party is often referred to as an ESCO. Energy performance contracts are often integrated contracts, which can comprise construction work in the building envelope, the supply of systems and energy, financing, management and maintenance services, and energy conservation guarantees. For the City of Leuven and its partners to invite tenders for an energy performance contract, there are several key questions they need to answer, including what is the suitable tender procedure, the requirements, and the criteria for ESCO selection? The complexity of many energy performance contracts causes the standard procedures, requirements, and criteria for invitations to tender to be less suitable and the entire procurement process to require more preparation.
A template document should provide a step-by-step description of the process of achieving an energy performance contract and procuring the services of an ESCO. This should include the applicable rules governing tenders, suitable procedures, and the criteria for selection and award for the invitation to tender (tendering phase).
The proposal should address (at least) the following:
- Development of an indicative list of information that is required before starting the tender, covering at least the typical data on building characteristics, tenancy, energy statistics, technological data, maintenance plans an costings, contracts needed, etc.
- Plan for ensuring sufficient data quality through review and confirmation of building-provided information in the data gathering tools for building owners.
- Development of criteria for selection of the ESCO service provider, e.g. financial and economic strength, technical and professional competence, etc.
- Development of award criteria e.g. NPV (Net Present Value) of cost savings, annual guaranteed energy savings, quality of plan, measures, monitoring/measuring/control systems, project team, etc.
- Plan for supporting the development of tender documents with terms, requirements, and criteria. Develop guideline template to support replication and scaling across different target groups.
- Testing of draft template with potential end users in Leuven through detailed engagement with care homes sector, schools, and municipal buildings.
To the degree possible, this work should seek to characterise the comprehensive set of interventions and solutions to deliver on Mission-level impacts, enhancing the value of an aggregated portfolio for procurement and improving the City’s and its partners’ position with respect to potential financial partners. A project model for the City and its partners would be useful for testing assumptions and highlighting the actions critical to developing an appropriate portfolio.
We anticipate that this assignment will have a duration of 3 months from April 2025 with an engagement of estimated 2-3 person months. Variation on this may depend on how engaged the selected supplier already is with the city and key stakeholders.
For clarity, the following services are specifically “Out of Scope”:
- The actual public tendering of projects.
The selected bidder is expected to engage with experts from the NetZeroCities consortium as well as engaging with the City and its key stakeholders. NetZeroCities experts (who are resourced already and do not have to be represented in a financial offer) are to be engaged (together with the City and its partners) on baseline briefings, the overarching strategic approach within which this assignment takes place. An explicit objective for NetZeroCities as a result of this scope of work is to enable Mission-wide communication in support of replication among other Mission Cities. At least 1 day of work should be assigned to communication (develop / deliver webinar, online assets), and collaboration with NetZeroCities is expected to ensure quality content for this peer-sharing.
Please find all further relevant information including forseen timeline, full scope, out of scope, milestones, and all related information below.
Timeline and additional information
Interested parties are invited to submit their proposals by 24 March 2025 to Mateusz Hoffmann and Radka Reil [CESF@netzerocities.eu]. Proposals should include and address all specific requirements related to the request which can be found below.
