Independent Consultancy - Technical Planning and Coordination

Terms of Reference: Independent Consultancy - Technical Planning and Coordination for the Open Energy Research and Analytics Consortium (ORA)

Background:The Open Energy Research and Analytics Consortium (ORA) is an open energy data partnership between the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Ember, Global Energy Monitor (GEM), Open Energy Transition (OET), and TransitionZero. Through a shared governance structure and a Secretariat currently housed at GEM, the consortium is working to build an open energy intelligence system based on trusted data, open-source tools, and collaborative analysis.

ORA’s members have already developed the expertise to build every component needed for a shared open data infrastructure as well as reproducible modeling, data pipelines, versioned and citable data, quality metadata, exploration tools, and aggregate data for validation. These components have not yet been coordinated in a cohesive system, and many of the ORA organizations have built similar supporting infrastructure separately. This leaves users and partners to repeatedly reconcile definitions, identifiers, formats, and methodologies, which limits interoperability, auditability, and reuse. The growing use of AI systems for energy questions adds urgency: the standardization, versioning, and source documentation needed to integrate data across ORA are also needed to make open, verified, citable data legible to AI systems.

ORA is entering a 12-month foundational phase to turn the consortium’s vision into an agreed technical and governance blueprint for an open energy data platform and orchestration system, including its audiences, governance, shared standards, and technical architecture for integrating member datasets, open models, and analyses. ORA is committed to ensuring that its core datasets, shared infrastructure, and collaborative tools remain open-source and publicly available.

Objective: ORA seeks an independent consultant, serving as Technical Coordinator, to facilitate and project manage the technical planning of building a shared data infrastructure across the five member organizations. The consultancy includes the interviews and research needed to develop concrete, detailed proposals for how members’ data can be integrated and supports members in agreeing on shared standards, a recommended architecture, and a roadmap for the next phase of the platform and the flagship product, the Open Energy Outlook. The result will be a consortium plan co-authored with the members.

Scope of Work: The Consultant will provide facilitation, project management, and technical analysis for ORA’s defined 12-month foundational planning phase. The Consultant will carry out the following work:

• Facilitation and Consortium Engagement:

• Facilitate the planning process with all five ORA members, preparing agendas and materials, guiding discussions, building consensus among members with different practices and priorities, and documenting decisions and next steps.

• Interview the data leads at each member organization to assess data assets, systems, workflows, and priority user needs.

• Facilitate a shared definition of the platform’s priority users (for example, energy modelers, policy analysts, journalists, civil-society researchers, planners in developing geographies, and AI systems) and the access patterns, tools, and guarantees each needs.

• Lead members through review of, and decisions on, the proposed shared protocols, architecture options, and data hub scope, ensuring all members have meaningful input.

• Project Management:

• Develop and manage an integrated workplan for the foundational phase, with milestones, dependencies, and responsibilities across the five member organizations.

• Track progress, risks, decisions, and action items.

• Coordinate with the ORA Secretariat on communication with members and ORA leads.

• Coordinate with GEM on the data hub proof of concept. The Consultant will define its requirements with the members, and GEM will manage the build.

• Technical Planning and Analysis

• Develop a centralized map of the datasets, scrapers, and in-house data held across the five members, and identify gaps and opportunities for greater interoperability.

• Develop proposed common schemas, identifiers, and metadata documentation, including a framework for a jointly governed identifier crosswalk linking each organization’s records.

• Guide the members to develop shared approaches to automated validation and open, machine-readable documentation.

• Analyze and recommend a design for the data platform (whether hosted, federated, or hybrid, and potentially varying by data product), ensuring datasets are clearly versioned and provenance is traced to primary sources.

• Work with GEM’s Chief Data Officer to contribute to a strategy for presenting the consortium’s trusted datasets to AI systems as a preferred source for energy and climate queries, and a structured learning exchange on AI-assisted research methods.

• Scope and define requirements for a limited proof of concept showing how a centralized hub/platform could serve particular user groups, and assess the prototype, which will be built by data engineering contractors working under GEM’s direction.

• Co-author the consortium plan with the five members and prepare an implementation-ready technical and governance roadmap for the next phase.

Deliverables

The Consultant will produce the deliverables below. The inception workplan will set out agreed delivery dates, review responsibilities, and acceptance criteria for each deliverable.

• Changes to scope, deliverables, or milestones require mutual written agreement between GEM and the consultant, following consultation with the ORA Secretariat

• Inception report and integrated work plan

• Assessment report on members’ data assets, systems, and priority user needs

• Cross-member data map and gap analysis

• Agreed priority audiences and use cases

• Draft shared approaches to metadata, identifiers, validation, and data documentation

• Options paper on platform architecture

• Architecture recommendation and draft shared data protocols

• Requirements and scope for the data hub proof of concept, handed over to GEM

• Final consortium plan, including the roadmap for the next phase

• Meeting agendas and notes, and monthly progress reports

Timing and Payment Structure

The consultancy is expected to begin in mid-December and will run for 12 months from the agreed start date. Any extension will require a separate written agreement covering scope, duration, and fees subject to funding availability.

The estimated level of effort is equivalent to approximately 20 hours per week over the assignment. This is a planning estimate rather than a requirement to work a fixed weekly schedule. The consultant will organize their time to meet agreed milestones and participate in mutually scheduled consortium meetings.

The proposed budget allocation for this consultancy is approximately US$135,000. Services will be provided on a time and materials basis at an hourly or daily rate agreed before execution. The consultant will submit monthly invoices showing time worked and services provided, along with a brief progress report against the workplan. The Consultant manages their own schedule and working arrangements and is responsible for their own taxes, insurance, equipment, and benefits.

Contract Oversight and Coordination

GEM, as the current host of the ORA Consortium, will be the contracting party and administer the consultancy. GEM’s Chief Data Officer is the primary technical and contract contact, confirms milestones with the consultant, and approves deliverables against the agreed scope and acceptance criteria. This oversight concerns project requirements and outputs; the consultant remains responsible for how the services are performed.

The Consultant will coordinate with the Chief Data Officer, GEM’s director of Product and the ORA Secr