Social Mobility Commission - State of the Nation 2027

Bidders must submit their Bids before 12:00 midday on 19th June 2026. All Bids must be submitted to [email protected]. Failure to return Bids by the time and due date or in the required format may disqualify Bidders from consideration.

Format of the bid

Tenderers should present their proposals in the following format:

Section 1: Summary of Proposal

Section 2: Meeting the Specification

Details of proposed approach;

• Methodology including constraints and possible solutions;
• Project management - Tenderers should indicate how they will monitor the project to ensure it is delivered in terms of quality, timeliness and cost. Tenders must include a work plan/Gantt chart that clearly shows the key activities and milestones leading up to the final report.
• Staffing, including short staff profiles covering examples of key relevant experience and individual/staff expertise and qualifications. Proposed distribution of duties should be clearly stated if the bid involves sub-contracting or collaboration between different providers; and
• Outputs, including how the findings will be presented.

Section 3: Cost and Charging Arrangements

Costs should be shown separately by deliverables set out above. For example:

• Deliverable 1: £ Insert amount
• Deliverable 2: £ Insert amount
• Deliverable 3: £ Insert amount
• Deliverable 4: £ Insert amount
• Deliverable 5: £ Insert amount
• Total: £ Insert amount

All costs should be quoted exclusive of VAT, but please indicate if the project will attract VAT. If your proposal includes costs for sub-contractors these costs must be shown inclusive of any VAT element (e.g. if a sub-contractor's costs to you are £10K plus VAT, your proposal should show subcontractors costs as £12K inclusive of VAT @ 20%).

The department will also conduct its own due diligence checks in relation to the bidder's financial viability and may request additional financial information to be provided as part of this process. Whilst the department will attempt to mitigate any financial risks it may, at its own discretion, reject a bid where it assesses the financial risk to be too great to proceed with the award of the contract.

Section 4: Risk Management

• Outline, in no more than one-page, the key risks to delivering the project and what contingencies will be put in place to deal with them.
• A risk is any factor that may delay, disrupt or prevent the full achievement of a project objective. All risks should be identified.
• For each risk, the one-page summary should assess its likelihood (high, medium or low) and specify its possible impact on the project objectives (again rated high, medium or low). The assessment should also identify appropriate actions that would reduce or eliminate each risk or its impact.
• Typical areas of risk for a research project might include staffing, resource constraints, technical constraints, data access, timing, management and operational issues, but this is not an exhaustive list.

Section 5: Data Security

• Provide a plan that explains how departmental and/or personal data will be protected.
• Provide a copy of your Cyber Essentials Qualification.

Section 6: References

For the references, the SMC requires relevant examples of similar projects you have completed and how they are similar to this tender.

Sections 1-4 should not exceed 10 sides of A4 and sections 5-6 should not exceed 3 sides of A4, for a combined total of 13 sides. Any bids above that will not be considered. The font size should not be smaller than 10pt. Embedded links will not be considered, nor will Annexes that exceed the 13 page count.