Awarded to Cyber-Duck

Start date: Sunday 30 May 2021
Value: £1,092,800
Company size: SME
College of Policing Ltd

College of Policing Website

20 Incomplete applications

13 SME, 7 large

4 Completed applications

4 SME, 0 large

Important dates

Published
Wednesday 28 April 2021
Deadline for asking questions
Wednesday 5 May 2021 at 11:59pm GMT
Closing date for applications
Wednesday 12 May 2021 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

Off-payroll (IR35) determination
Summary of the work
We require an experienced supplier service design and digital development partner who can meet our requirements and work with us to deliver this project on time and within budget and to GDS Service Standards. Work includes content design and engagement, UX design, user research and website development.
Latest start date
Monday 31 May 2021
Expected contract length
18 months – 2 years
Location
London
Organisation the work is for
College of Policing Ltd
Budget range
£800k on the development of this project.
£165k per year for 2 years for support, hosting and monitoring

About the work

Why the work is being done
The College of Policing exists to help policing protect people, by sharing knowledge and best practise, providing training and professional development, and supporting national recruitment.
To complete the build of a user friendly College website to improve accessibility and ease of use to deliver our online services through a single interface for everyone in, and linked to policing. Our brand identity across external facing College sites needs to be consistent together with a uniform design and style to deliver a professional service. Our College microsites need to be modernised, integrated and migrated with our main College website and utilise modern technology to reduce the overheads of maintaining legacy systems.
The first part of the project is complete with the delivery of the new main College website now live. Work has commenced developing functionality in the CMS and a content roadmap is in place to migrate College microsites across to the main central site.
Problem to be solved
We are seeking an experienced delivery partner who can provide us with the essential technical, design and tactical support to complete the transition and migration of College microsites.
With the main website complete, the next set of deliverables unique and specific to the College are:
1) Research, design and development of toolkits and custom interfaces for Policing needs available on What Works Centre microsite
2) Provide content strategy and content design expertise to develop user-centred accessible content
3) Deliver Progressive Web Apps to
4) Migrate and transition microsites with seamless switchover
5) Provide 24/7 monitoring and support of live services including management of the Gov.uk PaaS platform
6) Replacement of Drupal CMS search with Algolia for main site and microsites as they transition
7) Integration and build of Algolia search to incorporate search results from external Police sites into main College site
8) Improve website accessibility by meeting WCAG 2.1 AA guidelines
9) Maintaining Police accreditations with ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials certifications
Who the users are and what they need to do
Member of the public - I need to know how to contact the police so that I can report a crime.
Member of the public - I need to know how to join the police so I can get a job.
Police Officer - I need to learn about training and development opportunities so that I can get promoted.
Content author - I need to be able to quickly and easily update content on the website so that it's relevant and up to date for our users.
Early market engagement
Any work that’s already been done
Existing team
The internal project team currently consists of Product Owner, Website Content designers, Project Manager, Digital Transformation Project Leads from Digital and MarComms, Business Analysts, Business Support, Application Specialists, Software Development Manager, Data Analyst and Test Manager.
Current phase
Live

Work setup

Address where the work will take place
The work can be performed from any location. Our London office is based onsite with National Crime Agency in Vauxhall. The supplier should be able to travel to this site as and when necessary. Until further notice, all team members are working from home due to COVID restrictions.
Working arrangements
Working largely off-site at supplier's location with meetings with the whole team. This is largely due to space restrictions at our office. We anticipate a mix of on-site and off-site working and would require the chosen agency to work within our London office for two to three days a week. We require a team who will fully integrate with our team, sharing their knowledge and insight; working in the open and demonstrating good agile product delivery practice.
Security clearance
Security cleared personal at NPPV1 or NPPV2 or CTC as required.

Additional information

Additional terms and conditions

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
  • Strong experience with the Drupal 8.9 Lightning CMS Layout Builder, Lightning Workflow, 2FA and security modules
  • Demonstrate frontend capabilities working with SaaS processes to ensure code is modular, extensible and reduces technical debt
  • Extensive experience of building accessible websites in line with the WCAG 2.1 AA Standards and participation in the accessibility community and advocating for accessibility best practices
  • Demonstrate experience in provisioning, configuring, deploying and managing the hosting platform on the [Gov.uk](http://gov.uk) PaaS platform
  • Demonstrable experience of providing 24/7 monitoring and support to cover hosting and application support
  • Strong demonstrable experience of replacing Algolia search solution with Drupal 8.9 search as main CMS search
  • Strong demonstrable experience developing Algolia to extend search capabilities to incorporate results from external sites into a single search together with good UX design concepts to deliver the best experience
  • Strong evidenced experience of supporting a website content and migration strategy working with SME’s to develop user-centric and accessible content
  • Demonstrable evidence of providing content development and design expertise to support SME’s to migrate and transition multiple sites into a single solution
  • Demonstratable knowledge of working in highly regulated environments
  • Demonstrable evidence of transforming websites through good UX design and coaching best practices across organisations at all levels.
  • Experience of developing Progressive Web Apps and able to deploy effectively using Drupal CMS
  • Strong experience of UK Government Design Principles, Service Standard and Service Manual and achieving a pass at assessment stage
  • Demonstrable evidence of work that has successfully passed a GDS Service Assessment at each stage.
  • Demonstrable experience of delivering user-centred design web sites
  • Evidence of ISO 27001 and Cyber Essentials certifications.
  • Strong understanding of user needs, good use of innovation and design skills are required for this task to deliver the required user experience. Design skills must be exceptional.
Nice-to-have skills and experience

How suppliers will be evaluated

All suppliers will be asked to provide a written proposal.

How many suppliers to evaluate
3
Proposal criteria
  • Technical solution
  • Approach and methodology
  • Team structure
  • Risks, Dependencies and Mitigation
Cultural fit criteria
  • Demonstrate how you will work collaboratively with the College in a multi-disciplinary team
  • Demonstrate how you will work to quickly join the College team and develop an understanding user needs to maintain project momentum and continuity.
  • Demonstrate how you will work with our developers to deliver the code as a partnership – so our team fully understands all technical decisions
  • Demonstrate how you will share your approach with the project team and wider user community to seek actionable feedback
Payment approach
Capped time and materials
Additional assessment methods
Evaluation weighting

Technical competence

60%

Cultural fit

10%

Price

30%

Questions asked by suppliers

1. 2 of the questions (6 & 7) appear contradictory. Can you confirm if you’re replacing Algolia with Drupal? Or are you retaining any elements of Algolia?
Apologies this is an error and should have read as follows;

"Strong demonstrable experience of replacing the native Drupal 8.9 search with Algolia search solution as main CMS search"

Please ensure when you respond you address this question and not the one originally published.
2. The Lightning distribution will be End of Life as of November 2021, and while the lightning modules will continue to receive security updates until the end of Drupal 9, Acquia (the creators of the Lightning suite of tools and the distro) are themselves discontinuing their use and promotion of Lightning in preference for “Acquia CMS” which uses core modules: Media, Layout, Workflow rather than their lightning counterparts. With this in mind, can I ask why you seem to have already decided to use Lightning...or have you mentioned this requirement because you are intending to migrate AWAY FROM lightning?
The current site is built using Lightning so the Supplier will need to support it and devise a plan for the upcoming upgrade to Drupal 9 before November 2021. There is no plan to move to Acquia.
3. You mention experience is required working with SaaS processes. Can you explain how that experience is relevant to this tender?
This tender is to also manage the ongoing service where the drupal CMS is hosted on Gov cloud hosting.
4. Do you have a reason not to continue working with Cyber-Duck? (assuming they are your current drupal partner)
The current contract has come to a natural end and therefore we have need to retender for the ongoing work.
5. In ‘Problem to be Solved’ point 6) you mention the need to replace Drupal CMS search with Algolia search. However in ‘Essential skills and experience’ you ask for: Strong demonstrable experience of replacing Algolia search solution with Drupal 8.9 search as main CMS search. Do you mean experience in replacing Agolia search with Drupal search or the other way round?
Yes, this was an error on our part. As previously clarified the criteria should have read. "Strong demonstrable experience of replacing the native Drupal 8.9 search with Algolia search solution as main CMS search" Please ensure when you respond you address this question and not the one originally published.
6. It would appear the last few contracts you have issued, have gone to Cyber-duck. Have they been involved in your work to gather the list of Essential skills and experience or used as a template for these?
The contracts refered to were for different requirements from completely different teams within the College who have no day to day working relationship.

This set of requirements has come from the project need to deliver the required functionality, content design and ongoing support
7. You ask for: Strong experience with the Drupal 8.9 Lightning CMS Layout Builder, Lightning Workflow, 2FA and security modules. Given Lightning is going out of support in November 2021 what are your plans for this moving forward?
The current site is built using Lightning so the Supplier will need to support it and devise a plan for the upcoming upgrade to Drupal 9 before November 2021. There is no plan to move to Acquia CMS.
8. Has the new college of policing Drupal website been delivered by an existing external partner?
Yes, current external partner is Cyber-Duck