Request for proposals

/

Contents

request for proposals for the provision of A PROPERTY AND ASSET MANAGEMENT DATABASE 2

Registration of interest 2

High-level summary of required functionality 2

Purpose 2

Background / context 3

Current position 3

Scope of work 3

Project management 3

Response and timetable 3

Clarification questions 4

Provisional project timetable 5

STATEMENT OF REQUIREMENT 6

Requirements specification and response 6

Method statements 13

Costs response 16

Evaluation and selection process 17

Terms and conditions 17

1

request for proposals for the provision of A PROPERTY AND ASSET MANAGEMENT DATABASE

South Oxfordshire District Council (‘South’) and Vale of White Horse District Council (‘Vale’) wish to contract a single supplier to provide a single, harmonised property and asset management (PAAM) database system for both councils.

Registration of interest

If you decide that you do wish to submit a Proposal, please register your interest as soon as you can by emailing

This will ensure that you receive the answers to any submitted clarification questions.

High-level summary of required functionality

A system is required which must:

·  Have a core property register;

·  Hold lease, acquisition and disposal details;

·  Have a diary system which will allow officers to plan for upcoming events;

·  Hold health and safety compliance data;

·  Offer user-friendly reporting;

·  Communicate with the councils’ GIS system, specifically ESRI ArcIMS/ArcGIS server; and

·  Have open-architecture, be accessible over full or thin client (specifically the councils’ extranet) and be compatible with Groupwise v8.

Purpose

This Request for Proposals:

  • Details how Applicants should submit their Proposals;
  • Sets out the overall timetable and process for the procurement;
  • Provides Applicants with sufficient information to enable them to provide a compliant Proposal;
  • Sets out the Evaluation Criteria that will be used to evaluate Proposals; and
  • Explains the administrative arrangements for the receipt of Proposals.

Background / context

Following the formation of the Ridgeway Shared Services Partnership (RSSP) in 2006, Vale and South have increasingly been harmonising services, staff and systems in order to achieve effective shared working to deliver value for money services.

Current position

Vale and South have recently undertaken a procurement for a joint property-based database system, which is scheduled to go live on 1 April 2012. The system will support a wide variety of council activities (e.g. Planning, Building Control and Environmental Health). However, it will not support corporate property and asset management activities – hence this procurement.

The successful supplier for the property system procurement was Ocella, which means that Vale will be terminating their contract with IDOX on 31 March 2012. One consequence of this is that Vale will cease to use the IDOX UniForm Estates management module at that point. At South, there is a bespoke Microsoft Access system, which holds basic property data.

A system is required which will store both councils’ property and asset management data, in a common format; this system will replace the two existing ones.

Scope of work

Included

·  Provision of property and asset management software;

·  Data migration from the existing systems at South and Vale;

·  Implementation of the software in an acceptance test environment;

·  Provision of training; and

·  Implementation of the software in a live environment.

Excluded

·  Provision of hardware.

Project management

The councils’ project manager for the procurement and implementation will be Chris Draper ().

Response and timetable

We invite you to submit a proposal, to consist only of the following two documents in font size 12:

1.  A document, not exceeding 12 sides of A4, which includes:

·  Written responses to each of the requirements in the Requirements Specification table;

·  Written Method Statements (noting that each Method Statement should be 500 words at most); and

·  A completed Cost Schedule.

It is not acceptable to embed a further document within this document.

Please name your document <company name>_text.pdf

For example, if your company is called Prop, your document should be called Prop_text.pdf.

2.  A document containing your ‘Ability to meet? A/B/C’ answers to the Requirements Specification.

Please name your document: <company name>_ABC.pdf

For example, if your company is called Prop, your document should be called Prop_ABC.pdf.

The councils encourage you to submit your proposal electronically if you can, and to return it by email.

Please return your Proposal only to the email address below, to be received no later than 1pm on Friday 11 November 2011:

Please note that it is the councils' policy not to accept late tenders.

Please enter Proposal for PAAM system in the ‘Subject’ field of the email.

Clarification questions

Clarification questions may still be asked up to and including Friday 4 November. Please note that for reasons of fairness, we may send questions and their answers to the other Applicants, unless proved to be of confidential content.

It is not acceptable to phone clarification questions: they must be sent by email only, to .

Provisional project timetable

Please note that the future dates below are at present provisional. We will give the maximum possible notice should any date need to be changed. It is assumed that the implementation project manager from the councils and from the supplier will be involved in all stages of the implementation.

Activity / Responsibility / Start Date / End Date
Procurement
Deadline for submission of Proposal / Applicants / 1pm Friday 11 November
Open Proposals / Project manager / 3pm Friday 11 November / 3pm Friday 11 November
Evaluation of Proposals / Panel / Monday 14 November / Tuesday 22 November
Panel meeting to agree short-list / Panel, project manager / Wednesday 23 November / Wednesday 23 November
Presentations to councils from short-listed Applicants / Panel, project board, Applicants, project manager / Monday 28 November / Monday 28 November
Panel Meeting to determine Preferred Supplier / Panel, project manager / Thursday 1 December / Thursday 1 December
Preferred Supplier approval from project board / Project board, Project manager / Thursday 1 December / Thursday 1 December
Letters to Preferred Supplier and to unsuccessful Applicant(s) / Project sponsor / Thursday 1 December / Thursday 1 December
Finalisation of and then signing of contract / Council legal department, Preferred Supplier, project sponsor / Friday 2 December / Friday 16 December
Implementation
Data migration / Supplier, councils’ ICT / Monday 19 December / Friday 20 January
Implementation of system, with migrated data, in test environment / Supplier, councils’ ICT / Monday 23 January / Friday 3 February
Acceptance testing / Project team, supplier / Monday 6 February / Friday 16 March
Sign-off of acceptance testing / Project team, supplier / Friday 16 March 2012 / Friday 16 March 2012
Go-live, to include updated export of migrated data / Supplier, councils’ ICT / 1 April 2012 / 1 April 2012

STATEMENT OF REQUIREMENT

Listed below are the requirements of the councils and the Priority attached to each.

For each requirement, please indicate your ability to provide a solution that complies with the requirements of the councils using the following scale:

Scale Value / Denotes ability to meet requirement
A / Our solution complies with this requirement
B / Our solution could comply with this requirement at stated extra cost
C / Our solution cannot comply with this requirement

We also expect you to provide, on a separate document, a written justification of your A/B/C indicator.

Requirements specification and response

Authorities’ priority: Essential, Desirable

Ref / Requirement / Authorities’ priority / Ability to meet? A/B/C /
General technical requirements
1.  / Network authentication
To enable single sign-on, the system should be able to authenticate users via a local LDAP. The authorities use a combination of Microsoft Windows 2000 AD, and Novell eDirectory v8.7 (with Domain Services for Windows), both of which are LDAP compliant. / Desirable
2.  / Desktop platform
The current standard desktop PC build includes Windows XP with SP3, with which the software is required to be compatible. The software must also continue to function following incremental patch updates as required under the Government Code of Connection. / Essential
3.  / Desktop platform
The software roadmap must show intended compatibility with Windows 7, and a commitment to update the software for any future versions of Microsoft’s desktop OS. / Essential
4.  / Desktop platform
The system should be client platform agnostic, able to be run either as a full client on an open source desktop platform, or entirely through a HTML5-compliant browser. / Desirable
5.  / Printing
The system must have the ability to print reports, letters, plans and invoices. It must be possible to print to both A3 and A4 size paper. / Essential
6.  / Thin client
The software is required to work through either a full client or thin client architecture (specifically Citrix). / Essential
7.  / Remote working
As above, remote working must be possible through a Citrix thin client. / Essential
8.  / Email and calendar
Both authorities use Groupwise v8 as their email and calendar system, which provides both IMAP and SMTP. Email and calendar functionality from the system must be compatible with either Groupwise directly or the IMAP/SMTP protocols. / Essential
9.  / Server architecture
Any server part of the system should be able to be installed in a virtual environment, utilising VMWare vSphere. / Desirable
10.  / Productivity software
Both authorities use Microsoft Office 2003 as the default productivity software suite. Output from the system must be compatible with this software. / Essential
11.  / Productivity software
The software roadmap must show compatibility with versions of Microsoft Office newer than 2003 (including 2007 & 2010) / Essential
12.  / Productivity software
The software roadmap should show compatibility with OpenOffice. / Desirable
13.  / Browser compatibility and accessibility
Any portion of the software delivered through a browser should be compatible with any HTML5 compliant browser. It should also be accessibility compliant to WAI ‘AA’ standard. / Desirable
14.  / Network storage
Local file and folder storage is provided by a shared EMC Celerra N120 unified storage system, attached via MS Windows CIFS. Any use of local files and folders will be required to be compatible with this technology / Essential
15.  / Open architecture
The system must be readily visible at the database level via ODBC/JDBC to enable the use of external reporting tools / Essential
16.  / Shared database architecture
The system must allow data, reports and letters to be associated with either South or Vale. / Essential
17.  / Data migration
The Applicant must be prepared to migrate into their system the Vale’s existing estates management data (held in IDOX UniForm’s estates management module, UniForm version 80 (1.0 0103), and South’s existing estates management data (held in a bespoke Access system – please see Appendix 2 for more details of this system). / Essential
Software requirements
18.  / Updates
The software (including any statutory returns) must be kept in-step with changes required through Government legislation and National Standards.
Updates to software as a consequence of changes in legislation or standards must be included in the annual maintenance and support cost, including installation of patch sets. / Essential
19.  / The system must prompt users to save, if they attempt to leave an amended record without already saving / Essential
20.  / Standard output
Standard output generated by the system (either in the form of letters or reports) must be able to be generated and sent electronically (via email) / Essential
21.  / Standard output
Standard Output generated by the system must be capable of being exported directly into Microsoft Word templates (in the case of letters and reports), and Microsoft Excel (in the case of statistical data). / Essential
22.  / Audit trail
The software should maintain an audit trail of data changes, identifying when data is changed, by whom, and how the data has been modified. / Desirable
23.  / Historical data
The system should retain historical data, or at the very least facilitate easy archiving of such data. For instance, if a lease’s ownership were to change, we would want to retain the former owner(s). / Desirable
24.  / Core property register
The software must be able to hold the following core ownership details:
·  asset reference
·  asset description
·  address
·  UPRN
·  property type/category
·  tenure
·  land Registry title number
·  measurements
·  parish and ward data
·  additional notes. / Essential
25.  / Core property register
The software should be capable of holding additional information regarding the estate, to include, but not limited to:
·  The ability to break the asset down into its component parts (e.g. buildings, rooms etc); and
·  EPC/DEC information and certificates. / Desirable
26.  / Acquisitions and disposals
The software must be capable of holding information regarding the acquisition and disposal of assets, including but not limited to:
·  deed type
·  costs
·  sales
·  contacts
·  fees. / Essential
27.  / Leases
The software must be capable of holding information on leases of properties, including but not limited to:
·  deed type
·  covenants
·  lease dates, expiry dates, break dates, review dates
·  cost/rent information
·  service charge details
·  arrears information
·  landlord and tenant details. / Essential
28.  / Diary/case management
The software must provide an appropriate diary system that allows users to:
·  Receive alerts when key dates are due;
·  View upcoming events in a calendar; and
·  Manage cases effectively. / Essential
29.  / Attachments
The software must be capable of holding attachments, or links to files, to include at least the following file types: .doc, .xls, .pdf etc / Essential
30.  / Health and safety compliance
The software must be capable of holding information and monitoring compliance with the health and safety aspects of managing the estate, to include:
·  asbestos
·  Legionella
·  gas certificate
·  boiler and heating service
·  boiler and heating insurance check
·  fixed electrical test (periodic inspection)
·  emergency lighting
·  portable appliance testing (electrical)
·  air conditioning/F gas/ventilation
·  lift service
·  lift insurance
·  lift tests
·  fire risk
·  fire fighting equipment
·  fire alarm
·  intruder alarm
·  general health and safety inspections
·  plant equipment insurance
·  access control
·  lightning protection
·  display energy certificate.
This is extremely important to ensure we are discharging our legal responsibilities properly. / Essential
31.  / Other information
The software should be able to hold additional information, or have the flexibility to accommodate additional modules for:
·  valuations
·  condition surveys
·  audit
·  energy and CO2 management
·  DDA
·  CAD Drawings (including intelligent CAD plans). / Desirable
32.  / GIS
The system must be able to communicate with the councils’ GIS system using ESRI server technology (ArcIMS or ArcGIS Server). / Essential
33.  / GIS
The system should allow the user to view GIS data for a given property selected within the system. Conversely, a user in the GIS system should be able to view data in the PAAM system. / Desirable
34.  / BS7666 compliance
The system should be compliant with the British Standard for addressing, BS7666:2006, or equivalent. / Desirable
35.  / Gazetteer data
The system should be able to read from or to receive exports in DTF format from the corporate gazetteer system (LLPG). / Desirable
36.  / Link to finance system
The councils have a shared accountancy contractor, Capita, who use the Agresso system for financial management.
The system should be able to read from or receive exports from the Capita Agresso (v5.5) system to allow for seamless integration of data, especially regarding:
·  Informing Capita of changes to billing on new leases and rent reviews; and
·  Downloading information from Capita on payments and rent arrears. / Desirable
37.  / Reporting
The software must offer a simple, user-friendly reporting tool for simple database queries. / Essential
References
38.  / The Applicant shall provide the name and email address of a contact at two local authorities, preferably district councils, for whom it provides a comparable service to that requested here, and who will provide references. The referee must also be prepared to host a short site visit by council officers, if requested. / Essential
Insurance
39.  / Applicants must comply with the councils’ insurers’ requirements and provide a minimum of £1m Professional Liability cover. Please confirm your compliance with this requirement. / Essential
40.  / Applicants must comply with the councils’ insurers’ requirements and provide a minimum of £1m Public Liability cover. Please confirm your compliance with this requirement. / Essential
Terms and Conditions
41.  / Applicants must comment on the councils’ Terms and Conditions, which appear in Appendix 1. / Essential

Method statements

Please also answer the following questions, using not more than 500 words each: