The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) is a business facilitator in Europe, removing trade barriers for European industry and consumers. Its mission is to foster the European economy in global trading, the welfare of European citizens and the environment. Through its services it provides a platform for the development of European Standards and other technical specifications. CEN's National Members are the National Standardization Bodies (NSBs), which work together to develop voluntary European Standards (ENs), together with the CEN CENELEC Management Centre (CCMC). For an overview of the CEN members see the CEN website.

In the past several years, CEN received from the European Commission a number of Mandates for standardisation projects related to childcare articles, toys and other products destined for or used by children. Experts involved in the works of several CEN Technical Committees (CEN/TC) related to children have identified and emphasised the need of having precise and relevant requirements corresponding to the real use of the products that they are standardizing. For this purpose, the use of correct and up-to-date anthropometric data is of great importance.

Availability of correct anthropometric data is essential to define appropriate (safety) requirements such as probes, openings, loads, accessibility etc. in order to avoid/reduce entrapment, strangulation risks etc. The use of incorrect or out-of-date data may cause the (safety) requirements not to cover all children to whom they are destined. Furthermore, experience and knowledge of the anthropometric experts and manufacturers show that values for body measures and physical strength of children have remarkably changed in the past 30 years and no European-wide collection of data has been recently conducted to fill this gap. Additionally, due to lack of a single source of up-to-date and confirmed data, different technical bodies in the European Standardization system have been developing their own approaches to defining the safety requirements to address risks posed to children. This has led to a fragmentation of the requirements which might cause confusion to consumers, manufacturers and market surveillance authorities.

The existing horizontal CEN/ISO technical report CEN ISO/TR 7250-2 provides “Statistical summaries of body measurements from individual ISO populations”. The technical report, however, only covers four European countries (Austria, Germany, Italy and The Netherlands) and as the body dimensions of people have been increasing in many countries over the last decades some of the information contained might already be outdated. Furthermore, it only contains information for working age people and for children there is no such document available. For this reason it is necessary to acquire anthropometric data of children and to provide the stakeholders, in particular industry, with this information, e.g. in a CEN technical report.

For this reason, CEN carries out, within CEN/TC 122 “Ergonomics” and in particular CEN/TC 122/WG 1 “Anthropometry”, a project to acquire anthropometric data of children and to provide the stakeholders, in particular industry and CEN technical committees, with this information, i.e. in a CEN technical report. In addition, a CEN technical report on the correct application of anthropometric and strength data will be developed. DIN, the national standards body for Germany, provides the secretariat of both, CEN/TC 122 and CEN/TC 122/WG 1, and performs the administrative management of the standardization work.

As the knowledge about existing anthropometric data and its availability (e.g. commercially available data from private providers or scientific publications) and on the specific demand of data from the relevant stakeholders, e.g. standards writers, industry etc. was limited and in order to avoid unnecessary work, the project was subdivided into two project phases:

Project phase 1

• research on the existence, quality and availability of anthropometric data of children in Europe resulting in collection of state of art of the data;
• evaluation of databases with respect to suitability for standardization;
• research on the demands from relevant stakeholders on anthropometric data of children, e.g. standards writers and industry, with regard to the application of anthropometric data;
• comparison of the existence/availability of, and the demands for anthropometric data in order to identify the gap between available data and demands concerning their application;
• definition of detailed work plan comprising of objectives and actions to be taken to address these gaps and demands in the second project phase;
• elaboration of a rough planning for project phase 2 including estimations on time schedule and budget.

Project phase 2

(objectives relevant for this call for tender are highlighted in green)

• acquisition of necessary available anthropometric and strength data of children in Europe;
• development of programme for the measurement of anthropometric and strength data of children in Europe in consultation with the stakeholders;

• supplementary measurement of required anthropometric data to complement the existing data;

• supplementary measurement of required strength data to complement the existing data;
• practical evaluation of existing and actualized databases;
• elaboration of guidelines on how to correctly apply anthropometric and strength data of children, e.g. when writing a standard or designing a product;
• publication of CEN technical report(s) on anthropometric and strength data of children in Europe and on the correct application of this data.

The first project phase was finalized by the end of 2016. The results of the first project phase formed the basis for the planning of the second project phase. The main tasks of the project are subcontracted to Technical Project Leaders (already selected) and an Anthropometric Survey Participant (subject to this call for tender).

Tenders for the Anthropometric Survey Participant shall be sent by mail to the secretary of CEN/TC 122 "Ergonomics" Mr Sebastian Lentz. For more information see the call for tender.

Please note that the FAQs to the call for tender have been replaced by revised versions of the FAQs several times:

• revised FAQs published on 2021-08-10;
• 2^nd revised FAQs published on 2021-08-13;
• 3^rd revised FAQs published on 2021-08-19;
• 4^th revised FAQs published on 2021-08-26;
• 5^th revised FAQs published on 2021-08-30;
• 6^th revised FAQs published on 2021-09-07.

Furthermore, the Call for Tender has been replaced by a revised Call for Tender on 2021-08-20. In comparison with the original Call for Tender only the deadline for tenders has been extended by two weeks.