Awarded to Unboxed Consulting Ltd

Start date: Monday 5 October 2020
Value: £78,300
Company size: SME

London Borough of Hackney

Discovery and Alpha of a building maintenance /management system

9 Incomplete applications

9 SME, 0 large

14 Completed applications

13 SME, 1 large

• Published: Monday 3 August 2020
• Deadline for asking questions: Monday 10 August 2020 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Monday 17 August 2020 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: Discovery and development of alpha system for asset management and repairs that allows repairs operatives to log/report a repair or maintenance issue on the move; back office staff to classify /escalate the issues including procurement and financial management; contractors to incorporate the service and system into their ways of working
• Latest start date: Thursday 1 October 2020
• Expected contract length: 6 months
• Location: London
• Organisation the work is for: London Borough of Hackney
• Budget range: Up to £80,000 exc VAT; We want to spend no more than £35,000 on the discovery phase and will then review the business case and opportunities for the MVP and alpha system, on which we'd expect to spend a further £45,000.

About the work

• Why the work is being done: The Council has a number of Grade 1 and 2 Listed buildings and other managed operational buildings. The Repairs and Asset Management Team are responsible for the maintenance, Planned Preventative Maintenance (PPM) and asset review of these buildings. The current system used by the team is outdated and no longer meets user needs.; ; The objectives we are seeking to achieve are:; - to create an asset management/PPM that repairs operatives across the council sites can log/report a repair or maintenance issue on the move. ; - to enable back office staff to classify and escalate the issues including procurement and financial management; ; - for contractors to incorporate the service and system into their ways of working with minimal effort
• Problem to be solved: As part of the discovery we want to understand:; - clearly identified requirements; - how we can support excellent performance and reliability of the system; - the skills we would need to have to support the solution; - which technology is sufficiently easy for operatives to use; - where data needs to be stored and the main data flows between systems; - how all repairs are logged and end to end monitoring undertaken on the new system; - how the Council and contractors have a single view of the status of defects; - how to have clear relationship between all Council properties; - how existing products could be further developed to meet the user needs
• Who the users are and what they need to do: As a Head of Service, I need an overview of multiple buildings of different nature to understand and join up data across different schemas; ; As a Manager I need to be able to hold/manage and monitor the Asset Register and Life Cycle Cost details and other Capital related works.; ; As an operative, I need to use handheld devices so that I can take pictures, record sufficient level of data and update records while on the move to enable maintenance team to respond quickly.; ; As an admin officer I need to classify damages, record all costs, work types/classifications and costcodes for budgetary and financial management ; ; As an admin officer I to have interface with LBH Cedar system to report on various financial levels ; ; As a repairs team we need to have an LBH Client side dashboard for the Client team, FM Team and Contractors; ; As an super user, I want to have Administrator/Access rights for making amendments classification and other drop down lists so that I can save time waiting for a developer to make minor changes
• Existing team: Head of service (Project sponsor); Product owner; Frontline staff as required
• Current phase: Not started

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: Initially at Hackney Council offices, Mare Street, E8 1DY (due to Covid restrictions we are currently working remotely but we plan to have some office based working over the next few months)
• Working arrangements: We would prefer co-location onsite for 3 days a week (as soon as Covid-19 allows), most weeks in order to engage with the current ICT team, building broader engagement with the style of working (eg through show and tells), and capability building activity through activities such as pair programming/design review. However we also know that remote working is both possible and will also be necessary over the next few months

Additional information

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:
  • Provide a multi-disciplinary team, including user research, service design, front-end and back-end developers
  • Demonstrate a track-record of user-centred design and Agile approaches
  • Have delivered a service that’s been assessed against a government service standard
  • Demonstrate experience designing services for a wide range of digital skills and confidence
  • Be able to build or design a tool that’s so good, people prefer to use it
  • Have experience of working to the GDS service design manual
  • Consume from and present to Hackney’s emerging API layer
  • Experience of developing design patterns that can be re-used for other services
  • Agnostic of any existing software
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • Promote user-centred design and Agile across the Council
  • Work with a Hackney based apprentice

How suppliers will be evaluated

All suppliers will be asked to provide a written proposal.

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 3
• Proposal criteria:
  • Understanding of user needs from the service
  • How the approach or solution meets user needs
  • How the approach or solution meets our goal
  • Clarity of the approach
  • Experience from a similar project
  • Team structure, including skills, experiences and relevance of individuals
  • Identification of risks and plan to mitigate them
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers
  • Be transparent and collaborative when making decisions
  • Have a no-blame culture and encourage people to learn from their mistakes
  • Take responsibility for their work
  • Share knowledge and experience with team members and the wider service
  • Work openly
  • Hackney Council is a diverse organisation, reflecting the diversity of our borough. Describe how you would work as a team with our organisation and other suppliers in a diverse environment
• Payment approach: Fixed price
• Additional assessment methods: Presentation
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  60%

  Cultural fit

  5%

  Price

  35%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. Could please clarify what you mean by"Work with a Hackney based apprentice"On this Opportunity?At any point in the past?Could it be an apprentice employed by another supplier?/You?Thanks: We have a number of Hackney based apprentices employed by the Council. We would hope your culture and approach is conducive to working with one of our apprentices - sharing knowledge and upskilling as part of the project.; If you have other evidence about how you support getting people into the digital and technology industry that would be great.
• 2. For the essential skill "Consume from and present to Hackney’s emerging API layer" are we able to demonstrate experience consuming/working with APIs generally, or do we have to specifically have experience with Hackney's API?: We will expect that you have had experience working with APIs generally. We are currently working on building our Platform APIs to make API first strategy more secure, reusable, data model specific and sustainable. These APIs will be resilient, responsive, domain modeled, well defined with API specification available on our API hub and scalable comparatively.; For more info please refer to https://github.com/LBHackney-IT/API-Playbook-v2-beta
• 3. Under essential skills and experience, you ask for "Consume from and present to Hackney’s emerging API layer". We have never worked with your API layer, is this a requirement or would working with other similar API layer be sufficient?: We will expect that you have had experience working with APIs generally. We are currently working on building our Platform APIs to make API first strategy more secure, reusable, data model specific and sustainable. These APIs will be resilient, responsive, domain modeled, well defined with API specification available on our API hub and scalable comparatively.; For more info please refer to https://github.com/LBHackney-IT/API-Playbook-v2-beta
• 4. Could you please confirm if we can carry remote user research?: Some remote working is acceptable provided account management and quality standards are met. We are currently working on plans to reopen our offices, for a reduced number of staff. Realistically we will be mainly working remotely for the remainder of the year, but our preference is to be co-located when we can, so we’d like this to be a viable option in the future, when it is safe and appropriate to do so.
• 5. Could you please confirm if we can carry out the Discovery phase using off-shore services?: Some remote working is acceptable provided account management and quality standards are met. We are currently working on plans to reopen our offices, for a reduced number of staff. Realistically we will be mainly working remotely for the remainder of the year, but our preference is to be co-located when we can, so we’d like this to be a viable option in the future, when it is safe and appropriate to do so.
• 6. Could you please confirm that suppliers would be allowed to conduct user research remotely where feasible?: Some remote working is acceptable provided account management and quality standards are met. We are currently working on plans to reopen our offices, for a reduced number of staff. Realistically we will be mainly working remotely for the remainder of the year, but our preference is to be co-located when we can, so we’d like this to be a viable option in the future, when it is safe and appropriate to do so.
• 7. Can you suggest if the suppliers can use offshore (outside EU) resources?: Some remote working is acceptable provided account management and quality standards are met. We are currently working on plans to reopen our offices, for a reduced number of staff. Realistically we will be mainly working remotely for the remainder of the year, but our preference is to be co-located when we can, so we’d like this to be a viable option in the future, when it is safe and appropriate to do so.