REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL

BUSINESS CASE ANALYSIS FOR SEWER SERVICE BILLING AND COLLECTION

DEPARTMENT OF FINANCE

NORTHEAST OHIO REGIONAL SEWER DISTRICT

PROPOSAL ISSUE DATE

JUNE 28, 2013

PROPOSAL SUBMITTAL DUE DATE

August 2, 2013

4:30 P.M.

-3-

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Section I General Information

1.01 Introduction and Background 1

1.02 Contracting Agency 1

1.03 Clarification of the Specifications 1

Section II Scope of Services 2

Section III Project Schedule 3

Section IV District Responsibility & Services 4

Section V Proposal Format and Required Information

Executive Summary 4

Submitting Agency’s Capabilities 4

Workplan & Staffing 4

Proposed Fees 4

Section VI Evaluation of Proposals

Pass/Fail Criteria 5

Scoring Criteria 5

Section VII Selection Process 6

Section VIII Additional Information 7

Section IX Submission of Proposals 7

-3-

SECTION I GENERAL INFORMATION

1.01 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

The Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (District) is requesting proposals from research consultants to conduct a comprehensive business case analysis on billing and collection methods for sewer services. The goal of the case study is to assess, evaluate, and analyze the existing billing agent, City of Cleveland Division of Public Utilities Department (DPU); the feasibility of in-house billing; or other third party billing agents for the billing and collection process.

The District is the largest wastewater treatment provided in the State of Ohio with a service area of approximately 350 square miles within and around the City of Cleveland. Specifically, the District serves 97% of the City of Cleveland and all or portions of 61 communities in Cuyahoga, Lorain and Summit Counties. The District’s service area contains a residential service population in excess of 975,000.

The District presently uses the City of Cleveland’s Department of Public Utilities as the billing and collection agent for the majority of the District’s customers, except for those located in the cities of Cleveland Heights, Berea and North Royalton which act as billing and collection agents for the District in their respective areas. The City currently bills quarterly approximately 300,000 accounts based on metered water consumption. DPU utilizes the Oracle Customer Care & Billing (CC&B) to perform their billing services which was implemented in September 2009.

In addition, the District has implemented a storm water management program beginning January 1, 2013 which created a new fee based upon impervious surface to our customers.

1.02 CONTRACTING AGENCY

The contract(s) resulting from this Request for Proposal shall be administered by the Finance Department of the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. The contract administrator shall be Jennifer Demmerle, Director of Finance or a person designated by the Finance Director.

1.03 CLARIFICATION OF THE SPECIFICATIONS

Questions concerning this Request for Proposal shall be directed via electronic mail to

Jennifer L. Demmerle

Director of Finance

E-mail address:

The Director of Finance will be the sole point of contact for questions related to this RFP. Contact with any District employee or elected official regarding this RFP during the proposal submission and selection process, other than the party specifically designated above, will be grounds for disqualification from consideration. Questions will not be answered over the telephone. The Subject Line should read: Business Case Study for Sewer Service Billing and Collection Process RFP Question and will be responded to, provided they are received by 4:00 pm July 19, 2013.

SECTION II SCOPE OF SERVICES

The business case analysis shall include the following tasks:

Task A – Review of existing billing and collections business model

Task B – Review the study performed on alternative methods of billing sewer

service

Task C – Perform workshop with District management

Task D – Perform business case analysis

Task E – Provide recommendation

The Consultant shall provide details as to the method of accomplishing the Scope of Work for each of the tasks noted. The Consultant’s proposal shall address all of the objectives for each task as outlined in the Scope of Work.

Task A – Review of existing billing and collections business model

Perform a review of the District’s existing billing and collections business model with the Cleveland Department of Public Utilities (DPU) to gain an understanding of the capabilities, challenges, benefits and risks associated with the following:

·  The District’s current system access for maintenance and reporting of its sewer and storm water billing and collection data in the DPU billing system.

·  The interface process to transfer storm water billing data to/from the District’s storm water billing database and the DPU billing system.

·  The ability to collect on delinquent sewer and storm water accounts.

·  The effects and risks of the DPU bill/account separation project on the District’s ability to efficiently conduct its business operation.

·  Current and anticipated future costs associated with the existing billing and collections business model with DPU.

Task B – Review the study performed on alternative methods of billing sewer

services

Perform a review of the results and recommendations of the recently completed study to evaluate alternative methods of billing sewer services to gain an understanding of the following:

·  The District’s selected alternative approach for billing sewer services.

·  The data sources to be utilized for the selected alternative sewer billing method.

Task C – Perform workshop with District management

Identify all billing and collection services and develop a workshop with District management to discuss the various billing and collections services.

·  Determine which billing and collection services could be performed internally and which services could be performed externally.

Task D – Perform business case analysis

Perform a business case analysis for the District assuming control of its sewer and storm water billing and collection processes versus continuing the existing business model with DPU. The business case analysis is to assume that the selected alternative sewer billing approach will be utilized in a District controlled billing and collections model, and the current water consumption method will continue to be used in the existing business model with DPU. The analysis must consider the benefits/risks and pros/cons in regards to the District being able to efficiently perform its business operation for the following key items:

·  Customer service capabilities and system access to efficiently maintain customer sewer and storm water billing and collection information.

·  Control of the billing process and ability to implement sewer and storm water billing policy changes when required.

·  Collection of overdue accounts without the enforcement option of water service shut-off.

·  Reporting capabilities including standard financial reporting and ad-hoc reporting/querying when required.

·  On-going operation and an estimated per-bill cost comparison between a District controlled billing provider and continuing with DPU as its billing agent

·  Staffing requirements

·  Change management considerations

·  Any additional items to the above that the consultant deems necessary for the business case analysis

Task D Deliverables

·  Document the details of the business case analysis for the key items identified

·  Presentation and discussion with District management summarizing the business case analysis between a District controlled business model and the existing business model with DPU for each of the items analyzed in Task D.

Task E – Provide recommendation

Develop a recommended approach taken from the discussions performed in task D

·  Draft report to District management on the recommended billing and collections business model.

o  For a recommended District controlled business model, present a high-level overview of the following:

§  Potential billing and collection service outsources that can perform all aspects of the billing and collection model (i.e. billing, payment processing, customer service, bill print and mail, electronic bill presentment & payment, collections and payment enforcement, etc.)

§  Implementation timeline and cost estimate

§  Ongoing operation costs and estimated cost per bill

§  Potential staffing requirements

§  Summary of risks

§  Summary of recommended next steps

o  For a recommendation to continue with the existing business model with DPU, present a high-level overview of the following:

§  Summary of the reasoning leading to the recommendation

§  Recommendations on realistic potential improvements that the District can negotiate in its next billing agreement with DPU

Task E Deliverables

·  Final report on business case analysis with recommendations & formal presentation

SECTION III PROJECT SCHEDULE

  1. Date of RFP distribution June 28, 2013.
  1. Pre-proposal Conference to be held July 15, 2013 at 2:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time), at the George J. McMonagle Administration Building (GJM), 3900 Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, 44115.
  1. Deadline for submission of proposal questions via electronic mail July 19th at 4:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time).
  1. Proposal submission due date is August 2nd at 4:30 pm.
  1. Conduct interviews of finalists and the proposed consultant if necessary between August 12 2013 and August 14 2013
  1. Complete proposal evaluation and notify selected respondents to begin negotiations by August 23rd 2013.
  1. Approval of tentative contract September 5th 2013.

Note: These dates are subject to change.

SECTION IV DISTRICT RESPONSIBILITY & RESOURCES

The District shall, at the agency’s request, provide any information and material on file that is pertinent to the preparation of the proposal. This may include reports, data documentation and other pertinent information that is not already available to the submitting agency. Please contact Jennifer Demmerle at via electronic mail for such request.

SECTION V PROPOSAL FORMAT AND REQUIRED INFORMATION

It is the purpose of this Request for Proposal to obtain complete data from each submitting agency to enable the District to determine which submitting agency can best serve all criteria which are to be considered in the award of the contracts. To this end, each submitting agency shall furnish a complete description of capabilities in the field of business case analysis for sewer billing and collection as part of the proposed package. The consultant shall furnish and include all information listed in this section of the RFP. Statements are required to be complete and accurate. Omission, inaccuracy, or misstatement may be sufficient cause for rejection of the Proposal or cancellation of resulting contract(s).

The following information shall be included:

*Confidential Information: The submitting agency shall clearly mark any information deemed proprietary as “Confidential”, to be exempt from disclosure under the Ohio Public Records Act.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY -

  1. Name and address of operating company.
  1. History of agency, key members of management team, including the makeup of the agency and experience with utility/governmental entities.
  1. The duration and extent of service experience.

SUBMITTING AGENCY’S CAPABILITIES

  1. Evidence of the submitting agency’s ability to work with other water and wastewater industries from past or present experience. A listing including phone numbers and addresses of contacts of other water/wastewater industries for whom the submitting agency presently work with shall accompany the proposal. If none, so indicate.
  1. Evidence of the submitting agency’s ability to work with private sector businesses. Indicate each organization’s name and address, contact person, reference telephone number, nature of services provided and dates of engagement.
  1. Evidence of submitting agency’s ability to perform business case analysis around billing and collection business models.

WORKPLAN & STAFFING

  1. Description of the approach for completing the study.
  1. Anticipated labor effort by task and staff classification for each activity.
  1. Schedule for study/project completion.

PROPOSED FEES

The District intends to award contract to the best agency that it deems most responsive and that provides the most comprehensive and high quality service to the District inclusive of fee considerations. The District reserves the right to accept other than the lowest price offer and reject all proposals that are not responsive to this request. The District also reserves the right to specifically negotiate the price for the scope of services. Fee information is to include the following:

  1. The basis of the fee.
  1. The fee should be packaged, sealed and labeled separately from the main proposal response.

SECTION VI EVALUATION OF PROPOSALS

Upon receiving the proposals, a Consultant Selection Committee will be established by the Finance Department. The proposal will be evaluated utilizing the following criteria:

  1. Pass / Fail Criteria

Proposals not in compliance with the following pass/fail criteria will not receive additional consideration.

  1. Compliance with the provision of the requested information as stipulated in Section V above.
  1. Avoidance of personal and organizational conflicts of interest as prohibited by state and local law.
  1. Scoring Criteria

Proposals which comply with the above criteria will be evaluated based upon consideration of the criteria below.

I. Experience, qualifications, and commitment of proposed key project personnel.

a)  The experience of proposed project personnel. Key project personnel should have held responsible project positions for similar projects, and possess the appropriate credentials (education, certification, publications, etc.).

b)  The extent to which the project personnel/team utilize their experience in meeting the prerequisites of the scope.

II.  Experience and past performance of the firm on similar projects.

The firm’s experience in conducting projects of a similar nature and complexity, in addition to the ability of the firm to draw upon this experience to benefit the project. Attention will be paid to innovations in applicable project areas. Scores will assigned based on the responses in the proposal to the RFP’s request for information related to the experience.

III.  Method of accomplishing the scope of work.

a)  Proposed organization of the work effort including the collection, organization, and analysis of data to facilitate decision making, problem definition, and alternative development.

b)  Innovations, alternative, and enhancements to the scope as presented in the proposal.

c)  Unique capabilities with possible high-impact applicability to the project.

d)  Understanding of the appropriate levels of effort for the required tasks.

IV.  Quality of the technical (written) proposal.

In this area, the responsiveness of the proposal will be considered as it relates to the RFP requests and prerequisites. The proposals should be organized, concise, and well written.

V.  Quality of oral presentation (interviews).

Demonstrated communication skills of the key personnel will be the basis for this score.