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KfW 2026-0023, Procurement Procedure „ Environmental and Social Consulting Services for E&S Experts “

Bidders’ Questions and KfW's Answers (Version 2) Date of Distribution 28.08.2026

No.	Reference Documents	Question		Answer
1	Deadline Extension		To ensure that we can develop a high-	Thank you for your interest in participating in our tender process, which is highly appreciated. Kindly note that this tender process was already initiated with an extended submission period. For that reason, we are currently not anticipating any further extensions. We still hope to receive your proposal and thank you for your kind understanding.
			quality and competitive proposal that fully
			addresses the specific requirements of
			the Terms of Reference (ToR) and the
			needs of KfW, we would like to kindly
			request an extension of the submission
			deadline.
			This additional time would enable us to
			prepare a comprehensive and well-
			considered proposal that aligns with your
			expectations and project objectives.
			Thank you for your support and
			collaboration
2	Short CVs	Can the same individual be named simultaneously as the Team Coordinator and as one of the required Environmental or Social Experts (i.e., counted toward both roles), or must the Team Coordinator be a distinct individual separate from the 3+3 Environmental/Social Experts, bringing the Core Team to a minimum of 7 distinct persons?	Can the same individual be named	The Team Coordinator must be distinct to the core E&S Experts, which means that 7 CVs must be presented.
			simultaneously as the Team Coordinator
			and as one of the required Environmental
			or Social Experts (i.e., counted toward
			both roles), or must the Team Coordinator
			be a distinct individual separate from the
			3+3 Environmental/Social Experts,
			bringing the Core Team to a minimum of 7
			distinct persons?

[Seite 2]

No.	Reference Documents	Question	Answer
3	Declarations concerning eligibility	Shareholder status vs. "permanently employed" In relation to Section 3.1.1 (Access to workforce) of the Vergabeunterlagen, which requires that 90% of the E&S workforce be "permanently employed in the company" (part-time and/or full-time), please clarify whether a shareholder or partner of the tendering company or a consortium member firm, who may not hold a formal employment contract but has an ownership stake and is actively engaged in the company's E&S operations, qualifies as "permanently employed" for the purposes of this criterion. Alternatively, please confirm whether this status would be classified as a freelancer or external resource (F) on the "List of Available Personnel" form.	Operating shareholders/partners or members of the executive bodies of the tenderer or a consortium member may be classified as “permanent employee (P)” in the “List of Available Personnel” and counted towards the 90% ratio under Section 3.1.1, provided that they perform E&S-related work on an ongoing operational basis for the relevant company. A purely supervisory or advisory role is not sufficient. The tenderer shall confirm, by submitting the “List of Available Personnel”, that any person classified as “permanent employee (P)” meets these conditions.
4	Conditions for participation	Maximum number of consortium members Section 5 of the Vergabeunterlagen ("Conditions for participation pertaining to consortia") sets out the obligations of consortium members but does not appear to specify a maximum number of firms permitted to form a consortium for this tender. Please confirm whether there is a maximum number of firms that may jointly	There is no legally established upper limit on the number of members in a consortium, provided that the requirements of public procurement law and antitrust law are observed.

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No.	Reference Documents	Question	Answer
		participate as a consortium of tenderers, or whether the number of consortium members is unrestricted provided the eligibility and technical requirements are met
5	Vergabeunterlage, Page 108 via eVergabe	Minimum requirements for the general 50- expert workforce (outside Core Team and Expert Pool) Section 3.1.1 requires access to a minimum of 50 experts in the E&S sector. Within this group, the 7 Core Team members and the 19 Expert Pool members form a subset with defined role based, sectoral, and qualification requirements. For the remaining experts within the 50 who are not part of the Core Team or the 19 member Expert Pool, please clarify whether there are any minimum requirements regarding specific expertise or specialization areas, sector coverage, country or geographic coverage, or language capacity. Alternatively, please confirm whether the only applicable requirements for this broader group are the 90% permanent	This is correct. 3.1.1 of the Kriterienkatalog lays out the minimum requirement: The Tenderer has access to minimum 50 experts working in the E&S sector, of which 90% of the employees working in the E&S workflow (part-time and/or full-time) are permanently employed in the company. The distribution should be balanced in the sense of being diversified and reasonably even across experience levels and education degrees, without any single category being disproportionately represented.

broader group are the 90% permanent

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No.	Reference Documents	Question	Answer
		employment ratio and the general balanced distribution across experience levels and education degrees
6	Concept	In the document ‘VERGABEUNTERLAGEN KfW-2026- 0023 Environmental and Social Consulting Services for E&S Experts Offenes Verfahren (EU) (VgV) Ausschreibung – section 1.4 ‘Contents of the tender’’, it is mentioned that ‘For documents that the tenderer must prepare themselves (e.g. concepts), the format specifications provided by KfW must be adhered to.’ We presume this would apply to the ‘Written Concept’ for which we have not found the relevant format specifications to be used. Can you clarify?	The formal requirements for preparing the concept can be found at the top of page 15 of document KfW 2026-0023 – Evaluation Matrix.

specifications to be used. Can you clarify?

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No.	Reference Documents	Question	Answer
7	Consortium of tenderers‘ declaration	The ‘VERGABEUNTERLAGEN KfW- 2026-0023 Environmental and Social Consulting Services for E&S Experts Offenes Verfahren (EU) (VgV) Ausschreibung’ talks about a “Declaration of Consortia”, however we have only found a template names ‘‘Consortium of tenderers‘ declaration’. Can we assume this is the same document?	Yes, this correct.
8	Terms of Reference	The TOR talks about a total of 1710 days effort which will be divided among the three consultancy firms to be chosen equally (leading to 570 per consultancy firm). However, the ‘Leistungsverzeichnis’ invites the consultancy firm to present the rates for the different specialists for a total of 1710 days. Please clarify if the budget needs to reflect 1710 or 570 days.	The budget for the entire framework agreement with three consultants totals 1,710 days. An even distribution is a reasonable assumption. Please refer to the contract for information on the rotation cascade and the contractual criteria for deviations from the consultant’s assignment. To ensure comparability, please submit a bid for 1,710 days.

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No.	Reference Documents	Question	Answer
9	Commitment in the Event of a Reliance on the Capacities of Other Entities	For the presentation of our bid, we shall collaborate with a few external subcontractors and other offices across the world that consist of the same group however are a part of different legal entities. Do we understand correctly that that each of these subcontractors/entities would need to sign the form ‘KfW 2026- 0023 - Commitment in the Event of a Reliance on the Capacities of Other Entities’?	Yes, since these are separate companies—despite being part of the same corporate group—due to their status as distinct legal entities, the form must be completed by each company whose capacity the bidder or the bidding consortium relies on to demonstrate its capability in accordance with § 47 VgV.
10	Submission of the Bid	It is mentioned in VERGABEUNTERLAGEN KfW-2026- 0023 Environmental and Social Consulting Services for E&S Experts Offenes Verfahren (EU) (VgV) Ausschreibung’ – section 1.1 Electronic submission of a Tender : Tenders need to be submitted exclusively electronically in text form. A signature is not required.’ And Section 1.4 Contents of a tender: ‘All forms to be submitted must be submitted in the format (e.g. Word or Excel) in which they were provided to the tenderer. Additional conversion (e.g. to PDF) should be avoided. However, some of the forms requested as a part of the Tender request for a Signature. In these cases, is it acceptable to transform these files to pdf for signing? Or is the tenderer expected to a) not sign these forms or b) sign the word file with an image?	If a document requires a signature, it is permissible to submit it as a PDF so that it can be signed digitally.

sign the word file with an image?

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No.	Reference Documents	Question	Answer
11	Contract	Should the Tenderer have comment on the contract template, where, how and when should we include our comment on the contract template and specific clauses during the Tender process?	Because this is an open bidding process, bidders are not permitted to make any changes to the tender documents as a whole.

KfW 2026-0023 - Question & Answer catalogue Version 2.pdf