Awarded to Axis12 Limited

Start date: Monday 3 February 2020
Value: £230,000
Company size: SME

Office of Rail and Road

Rebuild of public and industry facing website and staff intranet for regulator.

14 Incomplete applications

12 SME, 2 large

15 Completed applications

15 SME, 0 large

• Published: Friday 29 November 2019
• Deadline for asking questions: Friday 6 December 2019 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Friday 13 December 2019 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: The Communications Directorate at the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) wishes to develop a new external website and staff intranet as part of a re-platforming of both applications.
• Latest start date: Monday 3 February 2020
• Expected contract length: Up to March 31st 2021, to include iterative developments, support and maintenance post-launch.
• Location: No specific location, for example they can work remotely
• Organisation the work is for: Office of Rail and Road
• Budget range: Up to £220,000 to cover an interim deliverable and then entirety of the build, support, maintenance and hosting. This budget may reduce if we determine we can use our existing Azure hosting.

About the work

• Why the work is being done: The last significant overhaul of the ORR website (https://orr.gov.uk/) was in late 2013, when it was re-platformed on the Matrix CMS. The intranet, which is on Sharepoint, was built in 2015. A discovery phase determined in early 2019 recommended both the website and intranet be re-platformed on Drupal 8.; ; An initial deliverable, the scope of which will be determined between ORR and the supplier, will need to be made by 31st March 2020. Thereafter the website component of the project must be launched by 29th May 2020, with the Intranet delivered by 31st August 2020.
• Problem to be solved: The ORR website is an important communications channel for ORR and various stakeholders. In addition to re-platforming we are looking to make significant improvements to modernise the look and feel, search, navigation, content types, forms, accessibility and the mobile experience. Many of these improvements also apply to the intranet as well, alongside a need to be able to retrieve internally stored documents more easily. ; ; Additionally we want to form a relationship with a supplier that enables us to iterate on the website post-launch, as well as ensure that support and maintenance is carried out in a timely fashion.
• Who the users are and what they need to do: As a:-; ; Railway Infrastructure Contractor I need to be able to find information on ORR's method of assessment. ; ; Rail Industry Professional, recruiter or member of the public I need to find out how to apply for a Train Driver's Licence and information on safety regulations. ; ; Rail Industry Professional I need to find information on our monitoring of Network Rail, relevant consultations - open and closed with the full history, comments and archive. ; ; Rail user I need to understand ORR's remit, how to find relevant, up to date error free statistics and as well as clear information on how to complain.
• Early market engagement: In early 2019 ORR engaged Civic Computing Ltd to review their external website and staff intranet and make recommendations on how best to proceed with redeveloping both. This work included proposing a budget and timeline, conducting multiple stakeholder and end-user interviews, providing guidance on how ORR consolidate their digital estate on as few platforms as possible and recommendations on how those processes are managed and resultant decisions taken.; ; The key recommendation was that Drupal was to be used as a CMS for both the intranet and the website. However ORR also want to explore if existing technology they own can be used to build out both applications in their entirety, centred around a build in Sharepoint, or to support a Drupal 8 build (ideally hosted on Azure). ORR’s existing technology stack is centred around a Microsoft E3 Office 365 subscription which includes Sharepoint Online, Delve, Teams, OneDrive, Forms, PowerApps, Flow, Yammer. ORR also have a stretched Datacentre fabric into Azure and subscriptions in Azure for Azure Search and Analytics.
• Any work that’s already been done: The project is now at the end of an internal discovery phase, which should limit the amount of additional discovery that needs to be undertaken by the chosen supplier. Shortlisted suppliers will be provided with a full brief to respond to, an Intranet and Website Analysis and Recommendations Report and the 2019 Website User Satisfaction Survey Analysis.
• Existing team: The supplier will primarily work with two people. One, ORR's Digital Communications Officer and two, a Digital Project Manager, who will represent internal and external stakeholders and communicate and help establish priorities.
• Current phase: Discovery

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: At the supplier's offices. However, as required, the supplier will need to attend meetings and workshops at a combination of the suppliers sites and; ; Office of Rail and Road; 25 Cabot Square; London; E14 4QZ
• Working arrangements: Supplier will be able to work remotely, but must be available for meetings in London as required. Travel time and expenses must be covered by the supplier
• Security clearance: No specific security clearances required.

Additional information

• Additional terms and conditions: No additional terms.

Skills and experience

Buyers will use the essential and nice-to-have skills and experience to help them evaluate suppliers’ technical competence.

• Essential skills and experience:
  • Experience of developing online applications with reference to the GOV.UK Service Manual.
  • Provide a single example of your experience of having delivered a public/industry website using either Drupal 8 or Sharepoint.
  • Provide a single example of your experience of having delivered an intranet using either Drupal 8 or Sharepoint.
  • Experience of having delivered content managed websites which authenticate via SSO where credentials are part of Microsoft Azure Active Directory.
  • Experience of building site search with either Microsoft Azure or any LAMP stack (for example using Azure Search, Apache Solr or Elasticsearch).
  • Experience of delivering editorial workflows which can be used by distributed teams without the need to know mark-up or styling.
  • Experience of re-platforming a website, migrating content as necessary, in a time frame of 2-5 months.
  • Experience of delivering an interim deliverable as an MVP or Beta phase of a rebuild in advance of the full launch.
  • Experience of having delivered an Intranet concurrently with a public/industry facing website build.
  • Experience of managing iterative on-going developments and support, which includes automated regression testing on deploy.
  • Experience of migrating content from other CMS.
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • Experience in building websites and/or intranets in both of Drupal 8 and Sharepoint.
  • Experience of hosting Drupal 8 on Microsoft Azure.
  • Experience of using Azure Search with Drupal 8.
  • Experience of migrating sites from Squiz Matrix.
  • Experience of delivering headless CMS applications.
  • Proven record of contribution to open source projects.
  • Certified Scrum staff as part of supplier's permanent team.
  • Experience of working with client side Product Owner(s).
  • Experience of working with Dublin Core.
  • Any general certifications (ISO 9001, ISO27001, Cyber Essentials).

How suppliers will be evaluated

All suppliers will be asked to provide a written proposal.

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 5
• Proposal criteria:
  • Technical solution
  • Approach and methodology
  • How the approach or solution meets user needs
  • How the approach or solution meets ORR's functional requirements
  • How the approach or solution meets ORR's non-functional requirements
  • Estimated timeframes for the work
  • The risks perceived and how they will be managed
  • Team structure and qualifications
  • Value for money
  • Managing support and on-going development
  • Recommendation and costings for hosting and managing deployments
  • Case Study
  • Work History
  • Face to face presentation to ORR covering; 1) Vision for the ORR website 2) Intranet and Case Study 3) Approach and Methodology 4) Timeline and budget
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers.
  • Demonstrate a commitment to collaborative and transparent working and to open source technology.
• Payment approach: Capped time and materials
• Additional assessment methods:
  • Case study
  • Work history
  • Reference
  • Presentation
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  70%

  Cultural fit

  10%

  Price

  20%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. Are you committed to using Drupal or would you consider other content management systems?: Our discovery phase concluded with a key recommendation of Drupal 8. However, as we own Sharepoint, we’d be open to responses based on this, as per our stated ‘must have’ and ‘nice to have’ criteria.
• 2. Is the supplier required to supply both the intranet and website as interlinking platforms or would you consider a supplier to bid for just the intranet side of the contract?: Shortlisted suppliers would be expected to deliver both the intranet and the website.
• 3. Are you able to share the reasoning behind the recommendation of Drupal?: Drupal's recommendation was validated on the basis of: open source; market share; well documented/tested/secure extendibility; large, active community with accredited developers/associated professionals; clear roadmap; hosting agnostic; deployment/acceptance methodologies; variety of training/support options; rated highly via Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for WCM; easy to install/cost-effective to manage; good options around headless/multisite; clear support for development standards which help support best practice, good accessibility etc..; ; While feature-wise there's parity amongst popular, modern CMS, on considering many of the previously stated non-functional criteria ORR were confident Drupal offered the best balance versus other options.