AIinLT 2027 — Invitation to Quotation
Briefing & Feasibility Report

What is being asked

EDB is inviting quotations from a Service Provider to organise the third edition of the AIinLT Summit as a flagship of its Digital Education Week 2027. The provider must run a 2-day Summit (≥3 keynotes, 60 paper presentations, 1–2 expert panels) and a 2-day Workshop Series (≥20 workshops), secure clustered venues for 500+/100+/70+ audiences, deploy a minimum on-site team, manage publicity, registration, catering, AI-assisted simultaneous interpreting and transcription, video capture, an evaluation, and a public resource package — with a dissemination tail running to December 2027.

The make-or-break: the experience gate

This gate — not price and not the plans — is the first thing to resolve. If the Language Centre cannot itself point to qualifying events, the only viable route is to partner (sub-contracting is permitted, with undertakings) or to bid under a wider institutional/HKBU record with a professional conference organiser as team leader. See §6 for our record and the gap.

Prior editions — an incumbent is already ahead

AIinLT 2025 (4–7 Jul 2025) and AIinLT 2026 (21–24 Jun 2026) were both hosted by PolyU (Department of English and Communication) with EDB and SCOLAR. The 2026 edition drew over 5,000 attendances, with 93 parallel sessions, 22 workshops, and six keynotes. PolyU therefore satisfies the experience gate outright and can be expected to bid again. Sources in §5 and the appendix.

The consortium option

Because the experience gate is institutional, the most realistic route may be a joint bid: HKBU (Language Centre + CHTL) together with HKUST’s Center for Language Education. The quotation explicitly encourages collaboration across institutions and permits sub-contractors, and the 2025/2026 editions were themselves multi-institution efforts. See §10.

Effort & cost at a glance

Preliminary position

1.1 How it reached the Centre

So the immediate internal deliverable is a view + recommendation to Joshua and Hok Chung by 14 September, which they will take to VPTL.

1.2 Key facts (from the quotation document)

1.3 Deadline picture (as at 11 Sep 2026)

• 9 Sep 2026 (Wed) — passed
  Briefing registration deadline (Appendix B Reply Slip).
• 14 Sep 2026 (Mon), 10:30
  Online briefing session.
• 14 Sep 2026 (Mon)
  HKBU internal feedback due to Joshua / Hok Chung.
• 29 Oct 2026 (Thu), 12:00 noon
  Quotation closing.
• Late Nov 2026 → Dec 2027
  Contract deliverables timeline (see §2.4).

2.1 Theme & sub-themes

Theme: “AI in Language Education: Elevating Practice, Enduring Sustainability, and Leading a Paradigm Shift” — positioned as a progression from awareness (2025) → theory-to-practice (2026) → deepening implementation and sustainability (2027).

Eleven sub-themes (all must be comprehensively covered by the 20 workshop topics): (i) Sustaining & Deepening AI Integration; (ii) Redefining the Educator: AI as Collaborator, Teacher as Architect; (iii) AI-Augmented Personalisation & Learner Autonomy; (iv) Next-Gen Assessment: Continuous, Formative, Proficiency-Based; (v) AI Literacy for All; (vi) Inclusive & Equitable AI; (vii) Human-AI Synergy in the Classroom; (viii) AI for Smarter Language Education Administration; (ix) Multimodal & Immersive Language Learning; (x) From AI User to AI Creator; (xi) Evolving Policies & Future Directions.

2.2 Scale & mandatory content

Target participants: Summit — academics, researchers, postgraduates, undergraduates, school teachers, educators, curriculum developers, policymakers. Workshops — local teachers and middle-to-senior school management, curriculum leaders, teacher educators, school IT coordinators.

2.3 Scope of services — the full ask

• Establish a Summit Committee led by at least one faculty member, with Government Representatives as members.
• Venues: clustered, within walking distance; main venue for opening/closing for 500+; ≥5 parallel-session venues for 100+ each; ≥5 workshop venues for 70+ each; plus press-conference and media-interview venues. Accessible by public transport or free shuttle (provider’s responsibility).
• Manpower on event days (minimum): 5 academic staff, 5 technical support, 5 administrative support, 40 student helpers; plus a training session for all student helpers run by the provider and SCOLAR.
• Publicity & open registration for all participant categories; participant records, name badges, programmes (soft + hard copy).
• Catering: one morning and one afternoon coffee break on each Summit and Workshop day; one lunch on each Summit day.
• AI-assisted simultaneous interpreting + real-time transcription for the opening ceremony, panel discussion(s) and all keynotes.
• Video-record keynotes, paper presentations and panels during the Summit days; photograph the whole four-day event.
• Evaluation plan (effectiveness/impact) and a dissemination plan making deliverables freely accessible: (i) video recordings; (ii) an electronic resource package (summary of key research findings in plain English, panel advice/suggestions, workshop handouts/materials).
• Contingency plan (weather, enrolment failures/overwhelming demand, comms failures, technical failures, speaker no-shows).
• Collaboration across faculties/institutions encouraged; other tasks as specified by Government Representatives.

2.4 Deliverables timeline

2.5 Payment schedule

Note the cash-flow shape: 20% early 2027, 50% at delivery (Jun 2027), and 30% only after the dissemination + evaluation tail (~end 2027). Costs will run ahead of payments through the main delivery period, and 50% of the contract rides on successful delivery.

Two-envelope, 70 (technical) : 30 (price). Price is only opened and assessed after the technical assessment.

3.1 Technical marking (100 marks)

* Passing mark 16 applies to criteria (1)–(4) only, ≈25% of the 65 marks excluding the innovation/ESG reserves. Grades are five-step: Very Good = 100%, Good = 75%, Satisfactory = 50%, Fair = 25%, Poor = 0%.

3.2 Experience scoring (the incumbent’s advantage)

“Similar event” for the provider = an international conference in (applied) linguistics or AI in education with total attendance >4,000, including keynotes, parallel sessions, panels and pre-/post-conference workshops. For the team leader = a multi-day international conference with >4,000 attendance requiring stage/venue set-up, guest reception, catering and manpower deployment. Experience must be claimed in Schedules B/D with documentary proof, or it scores zero.

3.3 Final score

Consequence: the highest technical bidder automatically takes the full 70, and everyone else is scaled down against it. Price is a 30-point lever — a bid at twice the lowest price would score 15/30. Innovation/ESG proposals (20 of the 85 Part-A marks) are effectively “free” marks for good ideas and should be treated as a must, not an extra.

4.1 What the benchmark tells us

• Incumbent: PolyU has hosted both editions and comfortably clears the >4,000 attendance gate (2026: >5,000). Expect them to score 10/10 and 5/5 on experience.
• Scale is real: the 2027 requirement (60 papers, 20 workshops, 4,000) is below what 2026 actually delivered (93 sessions, 22 workshops, >5,000) — so the required scale is achievable by an experienced organiser, but not trivially.
• What made it work: free entry; strong government backing (Secretary for Education opening); a school-teacher focus; hands-on workshops rather than talks only; cross-sector panels mixing school educators with academics; and a heavy digital capture + reference-materials tail (a public thematic website).
• The 2027 twist: the new emphasis on sustainability and implementation depth, plus the explicit AI-assisted interpreting/transcription and a public resource package, raises the technology and post-production bar.

There is no published budget or ceiling in the quotation documents — bidders simply quote a lump sum for the whole service. The following are public market benchmarks gathered to build the estimate in §8; they are indicative, not quotations.

6.1 What the Language Centre has organised

6.2 The gap (honest assessment)

Three ways this could still be bridged, all of which need checking before committing:

1. Wider HKBU record. The quote can be submitted by HKBU (not just the LC). HKBU as a whole hosts large international conferences/anniversaries — if any qualifying event (>4,000; multi-day; with workshops) exists in the last 10 years, it may satisfy criterion (6). Needs verification with the Research Office / Events.
2. Partner (sub-contracting allowed). A professional conference organiser or another faculty with a qualifying event could serve as Service Provider / Team Leader, with the LC supplying academic content — declared in the Information Schedule with a sub-contractor’s undertaking (Appendix D).
3. Consortium. Team up with an institution that has run a comparable summit, or support rather than lead (e.g., partner with the incumbent), preserving LC involvement without carrying delivery risk.

If none of these hold, the quotation will fail Stage 2 regardless of how good the plans are — so this is the first question, not the last.

Bottom-up from the required deliverables (§2.4) and the 2026 benchmark (§4), over a runway of ~14 months (late Nov 2026 committee → late Dec 2027 evaluation report). Hours are person-hours across the core organising team; ranges reflect depth of outsourcing.

7.1 Planning & delivery workstreams

7.2 On-site effort (4 event days + ~2 setup/teardown days = 6 days)

7.3 Extra manpower needed (beyond current staff)

If the LC leads in-house without a PCO, essentially all of the planning roles above must be backfilled or seconded — i.e., the centre would need to release ~2–3 FTE for over a year, or buy the capability in.

Reality check: at a required 4,000 attendances those totals imply roughly HK$900–2,000 per attendance, which is plausible for a free, catered, multi-track, multi-day summit with production. The 20/50/30 payment schedule (see §2.5) means most cost is incurred before the 50% delivery payment.

A consortium route directly attacks the single blocking issue in §6: the >4,000-attendance experience requirement. The quotation itself encourages this — Clause 4.9 invites collaboration across faculties and/or institutions “initiated and coordinated by the Service Provider”, and sub-contracting is permitted (with the sub-contractor’s undertaking at Appendix D). The 2025 and 2026 editions were themselves multi-institution efforts (EDB + SCOLAR + PolyU + EdCity), so a joint bid is the conventional shape for this event rather than an exception.

10.1 What each partner brings

10.2 Fit with the eleven sub-themes

• HKUST CLE — AI-augmented personalisation and learner autonomy (iii); next-gen assessment (iv); multimodal and immersive learning (ix), given its VR/AI speaking work; AI literacy for all (v).
• HKBU CHTL — redefining the educator (ii); human-AI synergy in the classroom (vii); smarter administration (viii); inclusive and equitable AI (vi); evolving policies and future directions (xi), via its governance and policy role.
• HKBU LC — sustaining and deepening AI integration (i); Chinese/English balance; from AI user to AI creator (x), through teacher-facing tool building.

10.3 Benefits and trade-offs

10.4 Structural options

1. HKBU leads (Service Provider) with HKUST CLE as a declared sub-contractor (Appendix D) and CHTL as an internal collaborator — keeps the Summit Committee at HKBU.
2. HKUST leads with HKBU LC/CHTL as sub-contractors — preferable if HKUST’s event record is the stronger qualifying evidence.
3. Consortium under one lead with an MoU — fastest way to evidence a combined record; needs a clear lead and a signed agreement.

Note the naming point: HKUST’s unit is formally the Center for Language Education (CLE) rather than a “Language Centre”; confirm the correct partner entity before drafting the Schedules.

Grouped for the 14 Sep feedback to Joshua / Hok Chung. The starred ones block everything else.

Primary documents

• EDB Invitation to Quotation, Ref. EDB(EID/LE)/26-27/06 — “AIinLT 2027_Quotation Documents.pdf” (140 pp., attached to the 3 Sep 2026 email).
• Email thread forwarded by Mable Chan (10 Sep 2026, 14:44) ← Hang Joshua Chan (3 Sep, 17:15) ← Albert Chau (3 Sep, 16:53) ← Kristy Wong, EDB (3 Sep, 14:15).

Web sources

• SCOLAR — Use of AI Summit (AIinLT), 2026 introduction: scolarhk.edb.hkedcity.net
• SCOLAR — AIinLT 2025 introduction: scolarhk.edb.hkedcity.net
• PolyU ENGL — “ENGL co-organises AIinLT 2026” (21 Jul 2026; >5,000 attendances, 93 parallel sessions, 22 workshops): polyu.edu.hk
• PolyU media release — “PolyU, EDB and SCOLAR co-organise AIinLT 2026” (21 Jun 2026): polyu.edu.hk
• GovHK press release — Digital Education Week 2026 opens with AIinLT (21 Jun 2026): info.gov.hk
• GovHK press release — first Digital Education Week / AIinLT launch (4 Jul 2025): info.gov.hk
• PolyU media release — AIinLT 2025 opening “nearly 1,000 attendees” (4 Jul 2025): polyu.edu.hk
• HKCEC Congress Plus — semi-buffet lunch price: restaurants.hkcec.com
• CUHK Henry Cheng International Conference Centre — Conference Services: conferencecentre.cuhk.edu.hk
• Conference Alert — Hong Kong conferences 2026–27 (registration fee ranges): conferencealert.com
• IAPCO — sector activity (2025): iapco.org · Ex Ordo — conference budget/PCO pricing: exordo.com

Prepared by Dr Simon Wang (simonwang@hkbu.edu.hk) for the research team led by Dr Mable Chan — 11 September 2026, for internal HKBU Language Centre discussion. Cost/hour figures are evidence-based estimates for planning only, not quotations.