Borough of Poole

ICT & Business Support

Replacement Planning & Land Charges System Project

Council’s Standing Order 41 Request

Project No: / WO20038
Version: / 1.2
Date Of Issue: / 11.06.08
Author: / Kate Joy, Project Manager, ICT & Business Support

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

1.DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION

2.DOCUMENT VERSION CONTROL

3.PURPOSE OF DOCUMENT

4.BACKGROUND AND BUSINESS CASE

5.FUNDING

6.RECOMMENDATIONS

7.APPENDIX 1

1.DOCUMENT DISTRIBUTION

Name / Job Title / Role / Action Required
Liz Wilkinson / Financial Services - Service Unit Head / Review, Approval & Sign-Off
Andrew Flockhart / Strategy Directorate – Strategic Director/Project Sponsor / Review, Approval & Sign
Cllr Ron Parker / Portfolio Holder / Review, Approval & Sign
Simon Milne / Financial Services – Management Auditor / Review & Approval
Tim Martin / Legal & Democratic Services – Service Unit Head/Project Client / None – for information only
Peter Watson / Planning Design & Control – Service Unit Head/Project Client / None – for information only
David Ralph / Strategic Planning – Service Unit Head / None – for information only
Julian McLaughlin / Transportation Services – Service Unit Head / None – for information only
Katie Lacey / ICT & Business Support – Service Unit Head / None – for information only
Andrew Milner / ICT & Business Support – Programme Manager / None – for information only
Jon Burrows / ICT & Business Support – Project Management Team Leader / None – for information only
Jamie Fry / Financial Services – Procurement Manager / None – for information only
Diana Goldsmith / Legal & Democratic Services – Principal Solicitor / None – for information only

2.DOCUMENT VERSION CONTROL

Version / Date / Amended By / Summary Of Change
0.1 DRAFT / 19.05.08 / Kate Joy / Initial draft for review
1.0 / 06.06.08 / Kate Joy / Final version for issue
1.1 / 06.06.08 / Kate Joy / Amendments made following review by Audit
1.2 / 11.06.08 / Kate Joy / Amendments made following review by A. Flockhart

3.PURPOSE OF DOCUMENT

3.1.A tender evaluation exercise has been conducted for a Replacement Planning and Land Charges System for Borough of Poole. Scoring against set and agreed criteria has resulted in the second lowest tenderer out of the two remaining tenderers in the process providing the highest evaluation score overall.

3.2.This report seeks the approval of the Head of Financial Services and the necessary Portfolio Holder, to accept a tender other than the lowest priced tender as outlined within number 41 of the Council’s Standing Orders relating to Contracts and Tenders, for a Replacement Planning and Land Charges System. This follows a Cabinet Meeting on Tuesday 3rd June 2008 which approved the following: -

That authority to approve the preferred supplier that has been identified through the tender and procurement process for providing a new Planning and Land Charges system be delegated to the Strategic Director in consultation with the Portfolio Holder. This will be subject to the final proposed costs of the new software not exceeding the total (Capital and Revenue) expenditure detailed in Table 3 (Section 6.6) of the Cabinet Report

That the funding strategy for meeting the total costs detailed in Table 3 in (Section 6.6) of the Cabinet Report be approved

4.BACKGROUND AND BUSINESS CASE

4.1.Planning Design & Control, Land Charges, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Team in Strategic Planning and Highways section in Transportation Services, have been using the Northgate MVM 20/20 application since 1997 to process planning applications and decisions and process land charge searches. 20/20 utilises Power Map as its map presentation tool. The 20/20 application is supported by Ordnance Survey (OS) Land-Line as its map base.

4.2.Planning Design & Control Services produces almost 3,000 Planning and Tree work applications and decisions on an annual basis. This produces approximately £1,000,000 of statutory Planning fees. Land Charges is a statutory service that generates some £800,000 of search fees, which has increased over the past years as a result of a 24-hour turn around of searches.

4.3.The requirements of the Borough of Poole and eGovernment initiatives have changed considerably in the last 10 years since the MVM 20/20 application was first implemented. The application cannot reflect the technology advances required, enable efficiency savings and supply improved services to the public e.g. by providing a self-service facility. An external consultant, TerraQuest was commissioned by Borough of Poole during 2005 to review Planning Design & Control Service Unit’s office processes and procedures. A report was produced and recommendations made on how Planning Design & Control could better meet the needs of its customers, and confirmed the need for Planning to upgrade 20/20 at the earliest opportunity.

4.4.On 21 December 2007, Northgate issued a formal end of life notice to Borough of Poole regarding its 20/20 application and subsequent withdrawal of support and maintenance of 20/20, with effect from 31 October 2008. This represents a significant operational risk to the Borough as the needs of the service will not continue to be met after 31 October 2008.

4.5.An announcement was also made on 4 June 2007 by OS stating the withdrawal of the Land-Line map base product on 30 September 2008. Land-Line will continue to be supported and licensed until this date. However, Power Map does not support OS Mastermap which is the replacement product accepted by the industry as the standard map base. The withdrawal of Land-Line product also means that Land Charges will not be able to continue using 20/20 to carry out its legal business requirements after 30 September 2008 because conducting Land Charge searches is dependent on the 20/20 application utilising the Land-Line software. The impact of this could mean the recruitment of additional personnel to both the Land Charges Team and Planning Design and Control Unit in order to complete the work outside of the 20/20 application manually.

4.6.Indicative supplier costs for a new Planning and Land Charges System have been identified during an exercise carried out by Planning Design and Control in March 2007. Four market-leader suppliers of Planning and Land Charges Systems were contacted and asked to provide Outline System Requirements for a Replacement Planning and Land Charges System and indicative pricing based on a five year contract term. Costs of which ranged from £130,000 - £283,000.

4.7.On 12 December 2007 a report from Head of Planning Design & Control and Head of Legal & Democratic Services was submitted and subsequently approved by Cabinet to proceed to the tender stage for a replacement Planning and Land Charges System.

4.8.Due to exceptionally tight timescales, the Project is following the accelerated negotiated tender route, as advised by the Corporate Procurement Team in Financial Services. The Invitation to Tender (ITT) document was issued to the following 10 tenderers on 10 March 2008: -

Plantech

Swift

IDOX Group

Innogistic

Ocella

Civica

MIS Local Government Systems

Assist

Exegesis

Datawright

The tender submission closing date was 2pm on Monday 7 April 2008, and tenders were officially opened up at 3pm. Prior to this date, 2 out of the 10 tenderers withdrew from the tendering process (Ocella and Civica (formerly Flare)). 6 tenders were submitted (Plantech, IDOX Group, Swift, Innogistic, MIS Local Government Systems and Assist). As 8 submissions were expected to be received, follow-up calls were made to the two tenderers who did not submit tender responses but had previously stated their intention to do so (Exegesis and Datawright), in order to confirm that they did indeed wish not to be included in the process.

4.9.Tender Evaluation Workshops were held during a week in April 2008 to enable the Project Team to evaluate and score the tender responses against the set and agreed criteria of a standard weighting of 40% cost and 60% quality. During this process, the following tenderers were discounted due to inability to meet the requirements: -

Innogistic

  • MIS Local Government Systems
  • Swift
  • Assist

4.10.Innogistic was discounted on the grounds of non-compliance based on the fact it cannot provide a fundamental part of software and on time (a Tree Preservation Order module). MIS Local Government Systems was discounted regarding Gazetteer functionality, which is unable to be offered as part of it’s complete solution (this in effect represents 20% of the Project's overall functionality and has been identified as an essential minimum requirement). Swift was discounted due to failure to meet any requirements for Street Naming and Numbering, and only having 3 of 6 high priority requirements for Gazetteer Management. These two sections account for 20% of the tender evaluation. Assist was discounted from the tendering process, as it confirmed that it did not have necessary accreditation with the Planning Portal for 1APP integration (a 'must have' requirement) following more detailed investigation.

4.11.The tender evaluation scoring was based on the standard weighting of 40% cost and 60% quality. Summary scores of the two resulting tenderers remaining in the process are as follows: -

Tenderer / Total Contract Value
(5 yrs) / Cost Evaluation Score / Quality Evaluation Score / Final Evaluation Score
IDOX Group / £213,010.00 / 100 x 40% = 40 / 91 x 60% = 54.6 / 94.6%
Plantech / £220,250.00 / 97 x 40% = 38.8 / 100 x 60% = 60 / 99.8%

4.12.Whilst IDOX Group’s tender is the lowest cost by just over £7,000 at £213,010 for the 5 year contract duration, it is evident from the tender evaluation process that IDOX Group’s solution does not fully meet Borough of Poole business requirements for a replacement Planning and Land Charges System, of which is reflected in both the quality and final evaluation scores.

4.13.Plantech’s tender has the highest evaluation score overall. It’s ACOLAID solution is a fully integrated suite of systems that fits in well with the requirements of Borough of Poole. The following are some of the points identified during the tender evaluation process that support this: -

  • Within the Plantech’s solution (ACOLAID) Land Charges system functionality is fully integrated with Planning, whereas within IDOX’s solution these business functions are treated as 2 separate systems
  • Land Charges is less reliant on paper trails and reflects electronic working more effectively
  • The ACOLAID solution includes easily configured performance management and case management information for every Planning Officer users main screens
  • Plantech’s ACOLAID solution is more user friendly
  • Plantech will supply 3 monthly contracted 1-day technical support visits to both Land Charges and Planning per annum. This is in addition to account management provisions
  • If additional licensing is required, costs and maintenance would be cheaper
  • ACOLAID has a more superior module for entering Local Development Framework (LDF) policies for Strategic Planning. The IDOX solution is due to be upgraded during summer 2008
  • Data migration methods and costings are more transparent and are unlikely to incur additional costs
  • Plantech have previous MVM 2020 migration experience
  • Favorable local authority customer base comments received

4.14.It is also worth noting that Plantech and it’s solutions scored the highest overall for supplier performance, functionality, reliability and integration in the 2007 Society of Information Technology Management (SOCITM) independent survey of Local Government applications and suppliers (Application Software Index July 2007).

5.FUNDING

5.1.The requirement for the replacement software has been part of the business plans for both Planning Design & Control and Legal & Democratic Services since April 2007. Accordingly the resources to cover the costs of the new system have been built into the various capital allocations and earmarked reserves available to the Service Units.

5.2.The annual maintenance costs for the next 5 years forms part of the tender evaluation process, and are included in the Total Contract Values of the tender submissions in 4.11 above. Annual maintenance costs have been removed from the expenditure table below as maintenance is currently paid at similar levels for the existing system (£23,075 p.a).

Table 1 – Estimated Expenditure for Replacement Planning and Land Charges Project

Estimated Expenditure for replacement project /
Total Cost £k
Capital Expenditure
Software and third party project costs
(Prudent estimate based on tender quotes) / 120
Revenue Expenditure
Project Management Support / 47
Software add-ons / 5
Planning Staff backfill costs / 6
ICT technical resource costs / 5
ICT hardware costs / 5
Legal Services for supplier contract / 10
Contingency (8% of project costs)
/ 15
Total Expenditure (Capital & Revenue) / 213
Funding Strategy /
Total £k
Specific Capital Resources
Planning Delivery Grant – Capital Grant
(Planning Services unspent 2006/07 & 2007/08 allocations) / 97
Planning Delivery Grant – Capital Grant
(Strategic Planning Services unspent 2006/07 allocation) / 11
Revenue Resources
Application of Grant Related Earmarked Reserve
(Planning Services – Planning Delivery Grant) / 58
Application of Service Unit Specific ICT Investment Plan Earmarked Reserve (Strategic Planning Services) / 18
Application of Service Unit Specific ICT Investment Plan Earmarked Reserve (Legal & Democratic Services) / 10
Application of Service Unit Specific ICT Investment Plan Earmarked Reserve (Planning Services) / 9
Use of PDCS Base Budget ICT / 10
Total Funding (Capital & Revenue) / 213

Note 1, £12,000 of the identified revenue resources will be used to fund the identified capital resources by means of a revenue contribution to capital (RCCO).

Note 2, the above table has been updated from the Cabinet Report of 3 June 2008 to reflect the internal ICT resource and hardware costs . The additional funding has been sourced from the Planning Design & Control Services ICT base budget.

Note 3, the table 1 expenditure reflects the estimated project costs which will be incurred in Year 1 of the Project. Please note that the ICT hardware and resource costs have now been included in the table (these were not shown in the 3 June 2008 Cabinet report). The additional funding has been sourced from the overall ICT base budget of PD&CS.

Note 4. The overall costs of the 2 leading tenders have been shown in paragraph 4.11 This shows the total 5 year costs of £220k for Plantech versus 5 year costs of £213K for IDOX Group (including annual maintenance). The table excludes the Borough of Poole internal costs which would be similar for either solution.

6.RECOMMENDATIONS

6.1.Due to extremely tight project timescales, it is recommended that approval is given in a timely manner to begin contract negotiations with the preferred supplier Plantech Ltd for a Replacement Planning and Land Charges System, following consideration of the evidence submitted within this report.

7.REVIEW & APPROVAL

……………………………………………………..

Andrew Flockhart - Strategic Director/Project Sponsor, Strategy Directorate

……………………………………………………..

Liz Wilkinson - Service Unit Head, Financial Services

……………………………………………………..

Cllr Ron Parker - Portfolio Holder

8.APPENDIX 1

Replacement Planning and Land Charges Project Evaluation Matrix

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