CONTRACT NOTICE – NATIONAL

1 Authority Details

1.1

Authority Name and Address

1.2

Address from which documentation may be obtained

As in 1.1

1.3

Completed documents must be returned to:

As in 1.1

2 Contract Details

2.1

Title

Digital Heritage ROSS Consultants

2.2

Description of the goods or services required

We intend to appoint up to approximately 16 Digital Heritage Consultants/organisations to support our heritage projects across all key stages of the grant lifecycle, from pre-application support through to development, assessment, monitoring and post-completion. Specific activities will include mentoring, monitoring and providing expert advice.

NOTE: To register your interest in this notice and obtain any additional information please visit the Sell2Wales Web Site at https://www.sell2wales.gov.wales/Search/Search_Switch.aspx?ID=114833.

2.3

Notice Coding and Classification

2.4

Total quantity or scope of tender

Estimated value of tender: Up to £118,000 (inclusive of VAT)

Estimated duration: Up to 31 March 2024

3 Conditions for Participation

3.1

Minimum standards and qualification required

Digital specialist expertise and skills

Consultants must be appropriately qualified, experienced and willing to engage with applicants and grantees to guide them towards achieving good quality outcomes.

All bidders should demonstrate an understanding of how the mandatory inclusion outcome is relevant to heritage work involving digital.

Bidders should also be proficient with the following general competencies, in relation to the competency area they are applying for:

1. Making use of data and technologies to support cultural, built and natural heritage

2. The Fund’s open access requirements and how these support heritage

3. Basic legal requirements relevant to the area/s of the tender they are applying to, including accessibility, safeguarding, and procurement.

4. Identifying how digital approaches can best deliver or support strategic aims, and understanding when specific digital solutions are not appropriate or likely to be effective

5. Understand total cost of ownership in relation to digital investment and how to identify ongoing cost, capacity and development issues in relations to digital solutions

6. Mentoring, project management or evaluation skills as appropriate

Digital Framework Competency Areas

Digital consultants are expected to demonstrate broad expertise within their chosen Competency Area(s), and to provide their particular specialisms within the selected Competency Area(s) through examples of recent work experience.

Audiences, Marketing and Communications

This is likely to include:

• Working with audience segmentation, audience data and web analytics

• Audience development

• Designing and evaluating digital marketing and communications campaigns across a range of platforms, including social media

• Developing and delivering online fundraising and donation calls

• Ticketing and online retail

Collections Management

This is likely to include:

• Management and maintenance of digital collections

• Discoverability and understanding audiences

• Games development, including serious games and geolocation

• Digital storytelling

• Digital display

• VR/AR/XR

• Working with open knowledge projects and communities

• Running online consultations

• Digital rights management

• Data visualisation

• Accessibility and accessibility auditing

• Ethical issues in intellectual property, consent, and archiving

Digital Service and Product Development

This is likely to include:

• Scoping and managing user centred digital projects and services, websites and apps

• Website design, development and training, particularly WordPress

• User testing

• Digital investment, including equipment, end user devices, infrastructure, software and service provision

• Digital service and investment evaluation

• Commissioning and contract management

• Online event and training design

• Asynchronous and synchronous online learning activity and resource development and evaluation

• VR/AR/XR

• Site specific experience scoping, delivery and investment

• Investment and management of digital capital assets

• Accessibility/usability auditing and policy

Digitisation and Archiving

This is likely to include:

• Digitisation of text, images, audio and film

• 3D digitisation (objects and places)

• Data mapping and GIS Data Capture and Conversion

• Selecting digital archives

• Local archive design, development and maintenance

• Working with metadata, tagging and folksonomies

• Information architecture

• Crowdsourcing and user generated content, including citizen science projects

• Community created collections

• Database development and management

• Intellectual property, copyright and open licences

• Working with sensitive life story capture

Events and Working Online

This is likely to include:

• Online event and training design

• Working and organising online, including consultations and events

• Managing teams online

• Digital volunteers and volunteering

• Accessibility/usability auditing and policy

• Online community engagement

• Online safeguarding

• Working with children and young people online

• Security, privacy and consent online, including for online events

• Diversity and inclusion approaches

• Digital advocacy

• Digital rights management

4 Administrative Information

4.1

Type of Procedure

Single stage

4.2

Reference number attributed to the notice by the contracting authority

NHMF 302

4.3

Time Limits

4.5

Language or languages in which tenders or requests to participate can be drawn up

4.6

Tender Submission Postbox

5 Other Information

5.1

Additional Information

Introduction

The National Lottery Heritage Fund (“The Fund”), formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) was set up in 1994 under the National Lottery Act and distributes money raised by the National Lottery to support projects involving the national, regional and local heritage of the United Kingdom. We operate under the auspices of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF).

2. Background - Context and Roles

The Fund invests in the full breadth of the UK’s heritage and, through our funding, we aim to make a lasting difference for heritage and people. This is reflected in the outcomes which underpin our grant-making and the objectives set out in our Strategic Funding Framework: Strategic Funding Framework (2019 - 2024)

We intend to procure a number of specialists (“consultants”), who can support the assessment, mentoring and monitoring of projects that aim to use digital technologies to achieve their outcomes. This covers both the pre-application stage and after funding has been awarded. Other services may also be required such as training and upskilling of our staff and applicants/grantees in the digital competency areas in this agreement.

We are seeking professionals with sufficiently broad digital experience to work across a range of heritage areas and types of project including galleries, libraries, archives, museums, archaeology and natural heritage. At the same time, we recognise that an individual consultant’s skills and experiences are unlikely to cover all the areas of specialist knowledge we require. This means we are looking to appoint across a range of thematic areas. Full requirements are contained in this Invitation to Tender document.

You may respond as an individual or as an organisation. Organisations must provide the names of individuals to be considered and provide responses to the Tender Evaluation Questionnaire for each person. A maximum of four people can be included for each organisation.

In order to provide maximum flexibility, you must be available to support projects across the whole of the UK. This may be done at distance and/or on-site, as appropriate.

We value diversity at The Fund and we acknowledge our current ROSS Consultants do not currently reflect the communities that we serve. Therefore, to ensure we can support a more diverse and inclusive heritage sector, we are keen to receive bids from a diverse range of consultants, such as those from diverse ethnic communities or those with a disability, for example.

Grants Lifecycle

Consultants may be deployed across all the key phases of our grants lifecycle as follows:

• Pre-application, Project Enquiry Form (PEF) and Expression of Interest (EOI)

• Development

• Delivery/Development application

• Delivery

• Post completion evaluation and review

Pre-application, PEF and EOI phase: During the pre-application phase organisations may need help to understand what The Fund’s outcomes mean and how they can deliver them within the project they hope to apply for. This support will be at the very early stage of project development and could result in an organisation submitting an application (for grants £3,000- £250,000, a Project Enquiry Form or for grants of £250,000 to £5m an Expression of Interest Form).

Specifically, they need to understand that all applications must fulfil the mandatory outcome i.e. a wider range of people will be involved in heritage, as well as The Fund’s open licensing and open access requirements. Organisations, including smaller often voluntary-led ones, do not always understand what our mandatory outcome means for their project and how they can go about engaging with marginalised communities by using digital in a meaningful way to help shape the project idea, plan and delivery.

Similarly, organisations of all sizes may struggle with understanding the permissions and consents that their project will require from contractors and participants in order to openly licence project digital outputs, and how to plan for our access requirements.

Projects may also need guidance in relation to how to best make use of digital tools, platforms or processes to deliver their projects, how to evaluate these, and how to ensure proposals and budgets are realistic from the outset.

Consultants would work with applicants as they prepare their PEF or EOI to ensure that costs and resources to meet engagement needs have been thought through and properly outlined at this stage.

Development phase: During the development phase grantees may be given a development grant so they can prepare detailed project plans for their full delivery grant application. A consultant may be asked to share their expertise and knowledge to help grantees shape their project and become better versed in the competencies they will require to deliver the initiative. This may relate to the development of the whole project or specific aspect. Consultants may also support the development of plans such as Activity Plans to meet the The Fund’s requirements.

Assessment phase: During the assessment phase consultants may be asked to provide advice on applications with which they have not previously worked on to provide decision makers with expert analysis of the project. The Commissioning Officer dealing with the application will specify the area(s) on which advice is required.

Delivery phase: During the delivery phase, consultants support grantees to deliver good quality project outputs and outcomes as per The Fund’s grant contract (with respect to their specific area(s) of expertise). Consultants also monitor progress of these areas against project timescales and budget.

Post-completion phase: During the post-completion phase grantees must comply with The Fund’s grant conditions for a set period of time. Consultants may need to support The Fund to gather lessons learned and review projects which are at risk of failing to meet these grant conditions.

Roles

The consultant’s role will be defined at the time of commissioning and will involve one or more of the following functions for individual projects or cohorts of projects:

A) Mentoring Projects:

• Facilitating grantees and potential applicants to identify and remove blockages to the application, development and/or delivery of their project.

• Using specialist knowledge and experience to support grantees and potential applicants to help develop and deliver their project’s vision

• Supporting grantees and potential applicants to undertake learning and development opportunities relevant to their project’s objectives

B) Monitoring Projects:

• Evaluating projects and their impact on people, communities and heritage

• Undertaking risk assessment (building on The Fund’s analysis) and developing an agreed risk monitoring plan. Providing mentoring support to reduce risk(s) in accordance with risk monitoring plan

• Ensuring compliance with The Fund’s requirements and reporting on progress against the project plan and project budget

• Providing expert advice on project management arrangements, procurement and cost and programme plans to support The Fund’s decision making

C) Providing Expert Advice:

• Supporting The Fund’s decision making process by commenting on aspects of a project application relevant to the consultant’s area of expertise.

Projects that have completed but are still in contract may require further consultancy support in line with one of the three roles above.

In addition, and from time to time, we may commission consultants to undertake broader work related to the competency areas of the agreement, such as training, knowledge development and upskilling of our staff and applicants/grantees on digital matters.

(WA Ref:114833)

The buyer considers that this contract is suitable for consortia bidding.

5.2

Additional Documentation

5.3

Publication date of this notice