Provision of insight and expertise into construction product sector operations, behaviours, and practices

The Department for Business and Trade's (DBT) Office for Product Safety & Standards (OPSS) is seeking to engage with suppliers for the provision of insight and expertise into operations, behaviours, and practices prevalent in the construction product manufacturing sector and those elements of its supply chain that possess the actual or potential ability to help ensure that products perform as claimed.

This will require suppliers to undertake a highly diverse range of tasks associated with OPSS's work in preparing for the future regulatory framework for construction products. Working with stakeholders, suppliers will gather industry attitudes and perspectives, whether towards the current regulatory regime or aspects of the potential future regime. This will help OPSS understand the scale of the challenge, and to develop options for regulatory approaches. Examples of such work may include:

Planning, developing and writing reports on topics such as mapping potential data sources within the industry; assessing the potential role of artificial intelligence as a driver of compliance; the practice of value engineering; the traceability of products; the measures necessary to protect consumers from construction product related harm and options available to OPSS in developing meaningful industry engagement arrangements.

Successful suppliers will have industry insight, expertise and experience gained at CEO/Board level in organisations either in or closely related to the construction product industry. Other relevant experience will also be taken into account. Suppliers will have an extensive network of senior level contacts, within or closely related to the industry, and with the reach to engage with, for example, the topic areas outlined above. Suppliers will also have the ability to successfully engage with those contacts to produce the necessary outputs.

The expected budget for this requirement is £50,000 excluding VAT.

Interested suppliers are invited to attend a supplier engagement session scheduled to take place on Friday 28 July from 11am to 12pm via Microsoft Teams. Should you wish to attend, please register your interest using the contact details below. The event will provide more information about the opportunity and what we expect from suppliers. It will also give suppliers an opportunity to better understand what OPSS aims to achieve from the contract.

Additional information: OPSS was created in January 2018 to deliver consumer protection and to support business confidence, productivity and growth. We regulate a wide range of products with a focus on their safety and integrity. We work with local, national and international regulators, with consumer representatives and with businesses to deliver effective protections and to support compliance.

Our mission is to be a trusted product regulator for the UK. This means protecting people and places, enabling business to thrive and empowering consumers to make good choices. We will be a leader of good regulatory practice and a champion of local regulation.

OPSS is: - the national regulator for all consumer products, except for vehicles, medicines and food. - the national regulator for legal metrology, ensuring weighing and measuring instruments are accurate and reliable.

Further information about OPSS can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/office-for-product-safety-and-standards