Request for Quotations (RFQ)

Enhancing Youth Employment Project –EYE

Designing tracing systems as a tool of quality for Training Providers

Helvetas Kosovo invites interested parties to provide services as described below.

1. Contract description

Enhancing Youth Employment (EYE) is a program funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Kosovo and implemented by the consortium of HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation Kosovo (HSIK) and Management Development Associates (MDA). The overall goal of EYE phase III is to increase the employability of young women and men in Kosovo. It will be achieved in a socially inclusive and sustainable way through systemic interventions in two interrelated areas: (1) Young women and men in Kosovo increase their employability by enhanced market demanded skills through improved access to training through industry-led training providers and non-formal training institutions (2) Young women and men can make better-informed career choices due to a more demand-driven career guidance system, while at the same time benefitting from a more efficient labour market information system.

One of the main objectives of Skills Development Outcome during EYE phase 3 is improving the quality/relevance of the non-formal training market in Kosovo. Therefore, EYE is focused to work on development of feedback mechanism and continuous assessment of non-formal training providers to enhance quality of the trainings delivered by them.

The overall objective of the contract is to support and build the know-how of 5 training providers in the verge of setting up a tracing, feedback and quality mechanism in place and being able to periodically update the gained data, aiming to contribute also to the data driven decision making to update the curriculums and make them relevant with the market demand.

The required services details are presented in the PART 1 of this document.

2. Timetable

1 Any application received after this deadline will not be considered

3. Nature of the contract

Service Contract

4. Negotiations

Helvetas Kosovo reserves the right to enter into negotiations with all or part of eligible bidders in order to amend and/or complete their original offers.

Negotiations may concern the technical, financial, legal and other aspects of the contract.

5. Eligibility

Participation is open to all legal entities (companies), excluding public authorities, registered in the Republic of Kosovo and individual consultants.

Groupings of legal entities (consortia) may not apply.

6. Costs for preparing offers

No costs incurred by the bidder in preparing and submitting the offers are reimbursable. Such costs fall under the responsibility of the bidder, including the costs incurred during negotiating and interviewing process.

7. Sub-contracting

Sub-contracting services to another legal person is not allowed.

8. Provisional commencement date of the contract

10.05.2023.

9. Initial period of execution and possible extension of the contract

Services or works are to be provided between 10.05.2023 and 30.06.2023.

10. Evaluation of offers

Each offer will be evaluated in accordance with the criteria and the weighting as detailed below.

The entire evaluation procedure is confidential. The Purchasing Panel (PP) decisions are collective and its deliberations are held in virtual session. The members of the PP are bound to secrecy. The evaluation reports and written records are for official use only and may be communicated neither to the bidders nor to any party other than Helvetas Kosovo.

10.1. Eligibility criteria

For companies

The bidders that pass the eligibility criteria will be processed for further evaluation.

10.2. Evaluation criteria of eligible offers

Criteria for evaluation of the Technical offer

The bidders that pass the Technical evaluation (min 50% of technical evaluation scoring) will be processed for further evaluation.

Criteria for evaluation of the financial offer:

The weighting of the criteria for evaluation of technical and financial offers are as follows:

After evaluation of offers, Helvetas Kosovo reserves the right to enter into negotiations with all or part of eligible bidders in order to amend and/or complete their original offers.

Contract will be awarded to the economically most advantageous offer. The economically most advantageous offer is established by weighing technical quality against price on a 50/50 basis. Helvetas Kosovo reserves the right to contract only part of required services or cancel this tender procedure should it not be satisfied with the quality of offers.

11. Submission of offers

Offers must be submitted via email in electronic format only.

• Eligibility documents – as per eligibility criteria table above - The name of the file should have the bidder’s name, Reference No: 3Q 09 -2023 EYE and the text ‘eligibility documents’ (for example My Company/Consultant 3Q 09-2023 EYE eligibility documents.zip),
• Technical offer - as per Criteria for evaluation of the technical offer table above - The name of the file should have the bidder’s name, Reference No: 3Q 09 -2023 EYE and the text ‘Technical documents’ (for example My Company/Consultant 3Q 09-2023 EYE technical offer documents.zip). and
• Financial offer must be presented in Euros as per PART 2 of this document - The name of the file should have the bidder’s name, Reference No: 3Q 09 -2023 EYE and the text ‘Financial documents’ (for example My Company/Consultant 3Q 09-2023 EYE financial offer documents.zip).

The financial offer document should be password protected. Financial offers received without password will not be considered for evaluation. The bidders will be informed in advance once the evaluation date is confirmed so they can stay reachable on that date in order to provide the passwords. During the evaluation process the entitled purchasing panel member will call the bidder and ask for the passwords at the spot2.

The subject of email should contain only the PRQ reference number (3Q 09-2023 EYE). The body of the email

should contain bidder’s official name, address and telephone number.

Offers must be submitted in English language exclusively to the following email address: procurement.kosovo@helvetas.org. Offers submitted after the deadline mentioned under point 2 Timetable of this RFP will not be considered. The counted official receipt time is the time showing on the email received from the bidder to procurement.kosovo@helvetas.org.

12. Alteration or withdrawal of applications

Candidates may alter or withdraw their offers by written notification prior to the deadline for submission of tenders. No offer may be altered after this deadline.

Helvetas Kosovo retains ownership of all offers, which have not been withdrawn. Consequently, bidders do not have the right to have their offers returned to them.

13. Validity of offers

Bidders are bound by their tenders for 90 days after the deadline for submitting offers. In exceptional cases, before the period of validity expires, the Helvetas Kosovo may ask bidders to extend the period of validity for a specific number of days, which may not exceed 40.

14. Signature of the contract(s)

Within 10 days of receipt of the purchase order/ contract already signed by the Helvetas Kosovo, the selected bidder shall sign and date the contract. Failure of the selected bidder to comply with this requirement may constitute grounds for annulling the decision to award the contract. In this event, the Helvetas Kosovo may award the tender to another bidder or cancel the tender procedure.

15. Terms of payments

Helvetas Kosovo is not a payer of value added tax (VAT). Prices in the application must be submitted, taking into account all expenses.

The payment will be made via bank account transfer to the winner of the tender in EUR within a maximum of 30 working days from the date of acceptance of goods or execution of services or works. Cases of non- performance of obligation and their legal consequences will be separately indicated in the contract.

16. Terms of cooperation

In the case of a contracting, the parties will have to perform according to the established time and in accordance with Helvetas Kosovo – Supplier purchase order or Helvetas Kosovo – Service provider contract. Helvetas Kosovo has the right to increase or decrease the number of ordered items. Helvetas Kosovo has the right to choose a supplier/ implementer on the given offer according to its own discretion. Helvetas Kosovo has the right to re-formulate the Request for Quotation (RFQ), Invitation to Bid (ITB) or Request for Proposal (RFP) to its own discretion, if any additional items are needed. In case of failure or non-compliance with contractual obligations, Helvetas Kosovo has a unilateral right to terminate the contract without incurring any legal obligation.

The Applicant has to be familiar with all instructions, forms and requirements mentioned in the RFQ, ITB or RFP documents. The responsibility for the submission of the offer in accordance to these requirements lies entirely with the Applicant.

Helvetas Kosovo signs a purchase order/contract with the winning bidder. The contract will come into force upon signature by both parties.

17. Ethics clauses/Corruptive practices

Bidders making false declarations may be subject to financial penalties representing 10% of the total value of the purchase order/contract being awarded. This rate may be increased to 20% in the event of a repeated offence.

Any attempt by a company/organisation to obtain confidential information, enter into unlawful agreements with competitors or influence the PP or the Helvetas Kosovo during the process of examining, clarifying, evaluating and comparing offers will lead to the rejection of its offer and may result in penalties as described above.

Companies/organisations must not be affected by any conflict of interest with other bidders or parties involved in the project. Helvetas Kosovo reserves the right to suspend or cancel the RFP procedure and/or purchase order/contract if corrupt practices of any kind are discovered at any stage of the award processor during the execution of a contract.

Companies/organisations will be rejected or purchase order/contracts terminated if it emerges that the award or execution of a contract has given rise to unusual commercial expenses. Such unusual commercial expenses are commissions not mentioned in the main contract or not stemming from a properly concluded contract referring to the main contract, commissions not paid in return for any actual and legitimate service, commissions remitted to a tax haven, commissions paid to a payee who is not clearly identified or commissions paid to a company/organisation which has every appearance of being a front company/organisation.

Contractors found to have paid unusual commercial expenses related to this project are liable, depending on the seriousness of the facts observed, to have their contracts terminated and/or be penalised.

The Helvetas Kosovo reserves the right to suspend or cancel the procedure, where the award procedure proves to have been subject to substantial errors, irregularities or fraud. If substantial errors, irregularities or fraud are discovered after the award of the purchase order/ contract, Helvetas Kosovo may refrain from concluding the purchase order/contract and/or terminate the purchase order/contract.

18. Operational language

All written communications for this tender procedure and contract must be in English or Albanian.

19. Additional information

The conclusion of the tender and the award of any purchase order/contract are subject to the availability of funds.

Helvetas Kosovo reserves the right to annul this tender procedure at any time, without any liability on its side.

PART 1 – ToR

Designing of tracing systems as a tool for quality for Training Providers

Terms of Reference (ToR) 2023

Introduction

Enhancing Youth Employment (EYE) is a program funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Kosovo and implemented by the consortium of HELVETAS Swiss Inter cooperation Kosovo (HSIK) and Management Development Associates (MDA).

The overall goal of EYE phase III is to increase the employability of young women and men in Kosovo. It will be achieved in a socially inclusive and sustainable way through systemic interventions in two interrelated areas:

(1) Young women and men in Kosovo increase their employability by enhanced market demanded skills through improved access to training through industry-led training providers and non-formal training institutions (2) Young women and men can make better-informed career choices due to a more demand- driven career guidance system, while at the same time benefitting from a more efficient labour market information system.

One of the main objectives of Skills Development Outcome during EYE phase 3 is improving the quality/relevance of the non-formal training market in Kosovo. Therefore, EYE is focused to work on development of feedback mechanism and continuous assessment of non-formal training providers to enhance quality of the trainings delivered by them.

Background

During the first quarter of 2021, EYE conducted the survey on use of tracing system of non-formal training providers with 40 providers in Kosovo. The goal of this survey was to understand the capacities of the providers, type of training they deliver, relevance of curricula and further investments needed to reach a full quality for training. To discuss the findings from the survey, EYE organized an event in October 2021 with private non-formal training providers that were part of the survey but also other relevant factors such as consultants who develop curriculum and Agency for Employment who are responsible for Vocational Training Centres. During our analysis in the first quarter of 2021 the findings suggested that there is lack of internal capacities and there is need for support to develop internal quality control capacities. As an outcome of the event, most of the training providers agreed to have some more appropriate feedback and tracing mechanisms in house that would also contribute to increasing of quality of the trainings through revising curriculums based on market and trainee demands. To design the tracing intervention, EYE project is willing to engage advisory services from a pool of consultants working in respective areas of their expertise. EYE expects that at least 5 piloted Training Providers will successfully implement a tracing mechanism. We expect that in the long run, at least 5 non piloted Training Providers will adopt tracing mechanism too, as a tool that enables constant feedback from trainees, tracking progress of the trained youth and translate the data into useful business decision in the future.

Objective of the consultancy

The overall objective of the consultancy is to support and build the know-how of 5 training providers in the verge of setting up a tracing, feedback and quality mechanism in place and being able to periodically update the gained data, aiming to contribute also to the data driven decision making to update the curriculums and make them relevant with the market demand.

Expected Outputs of the Consultancy

The main outputs expected from the consultancy are:

• Tailor made tracing mechanisms for 5 training providers.
• Assessment of existing capacities within the selected training providers (5 TPs).
• Provide tailored input in designing, setting up and updating the tracing, feedback, and quality mechanism to TPs.
• Suggest and propose to TPs what tracing model would best fit based on the TPs main products or services and types of the delivery of their products and services (trainings, curses, certifications).
• Develop a plan of implementation for each TP (5).
• Provide support during development of tools to measure feedback and using it for curriculum update.
• Support them in final design of tracing report.

Timeline

Deliverables of consultants:

• Findings report after screening/assessment of the training providers has been conducted.
• Progress report and presentation with suggestions, inputs on what approach to use for the training provider.
• Final report and presentation with findings of the tracing system and recommendations on how to follow up.

Role of EYE:

• Provide the consultant with contact information on selected training provides.
• Introduce both parties and clearly communicate the expectations of both parties.
• Contribute to the progress and final report.

Communication and reporting

Throughout implementation of the assignment consultants ought to keep close communication with EYE’s responsible staff. Potential shifts or slacks shall be openly addressed while ensuring that discussions will not undermine effective implementation of tasks.

Selection criteria

• At least 3 years’ experience in designing tracing mechanisms, CRM, or related feedback mechanisms.
• Understanding and knowledge of Vocational Skills Development in Kosovo is an advantage.
• Change management knowledge/experience is an advantage.

CONTACT INFORMATION

EYE Responsible Staff:

Fatlinda Mujko – Sr. Intervention Manager fatlinda.mujko@helvetas.org

Ardi Ponosheci– Intervention Manager ardi.ponosheci@helvetas.org

PART 2 - FINANCIAL OFFER

Financial offer

Helvetas Kosovo is exempt from VAT, thus the cost should be without VAT. The contractor is responsible for all other taxes and duties in compliance with the Law of the Republic of Kosovo.

Signed on behalf of the bidder: