Awarded to Axis12 Limited

Start date: Thursday 1 March 2018
Value: £99,450
Company size: SME

Heritage Lottery Fund

HLF website and online communities redevelopment

6 Incomplete applications

5 SME, 1 large

22 Completed applications

20 SME, 2 large

• Published: Thursday 4 January 2018
• Deadline for asking questions: Thursday 11 January 2018 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Thursday 18 January 2018 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: Re-design and build of HLF’s Drupal-based website and online community
• Latest start date: Thursday 1 February 2018
• Expected contract length: Feburary 2018 to March 2019, with support arrangements considered thereafter
• Location: No specific location, eg they can work remotely
• Organisation the work is for: Heritage Lottery Fund
• Budget range: up to £100,000 (exclusive of VAT and expenses)

About the work

• Why the work is being done: We want to redevelop the Heritage Lottery Fund website (which was previously developed in Drupal 7 in 2013) to coincide with the launch of new funding programmes under a new Strategic Funding Framework in January 2019, and as part of a new corporate strategy and wider business transformation programme.
• Problem to be solved: As part of our wider business transformation programme, the website needs to prioritise: ; ; - A strengthened focus on National Lottery players in our communications and advocacy; - Improving recognition and awareness of the National Lottery while promoting heritage as a TNL good cause, amongst the public , communicating the impact of our funding; - Building HLF’s profile as a sector leader, sharing research, learning and resources much more effectively as best practice for both grant applicants and the wider industry
• Who the users are and what they need to do: Applicants and grantees; ; Our core audience – all involved with our grant-giving function. We have the challenge and opportunity of expanding our offering to our other audiences, without neglecting this key user group. Satisfaction of this user group is currently high – and we need to maintain this.; ; Stakeholders, opinion-formers and National Lottery players; ; - wider stakeholders, partner organisations, advisers, and policy makers in heritage and culture; - opinion-formers, media and press, political representatives (such as MPs and government researchers), and policy makers who are not necessarily in the heritage field; - the general public, particularly National Lottery players
• Early market engagement: The website redevelopment project so far has included…; ; - Quantitative UX research of our applicant and grantee audiences; - Ongoing quantitative and qualitative research of our advocate/public (non-grant applicant) audiences which is being carried out by an external organisation – ComRes. This should be complete in time for the initiation step of this project
• Any work that’s already been done: In addition to the above, the following work has been undertaken:; ; - A content audit is being conducted of all static assets on the hlf.org.uk website; - A new content strategy is being worked on in parallel. This will be heavily informed by the results from the ComRes research,the organisational direction of travel and the emerging suite of grant products and themes/campaigns that will be needed to market them to potential applicants
• Existing team: The core team will be the HLF digital team (consisting of the Website and Digital Manager, Online Communities Manager and two Website and Digital Editors)
• Current phase: Not started

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: Heritage Lottery Fund; 7 Holbein Place, London SW1W 8NR
• Working arrangements: 1. Foundations of the website development project; ; - Evaluating the current website and what features can be preserved/recycled; - Make use of new and existing user research and content audits; - Mapping out of the fundamental architecture and other technical scoping; - Clarification of UX; - Design principles; - Creating development and requirement priorities (using MoSCoW principles); ; 2. Agile website development of core features; ; Waterfall elements will need to be utilised in order to launch a complete website in January 2019. Agile sprints will need to be used to prioritise elements that we have a complete brief for.

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:
  • Deliver digital services using a multidisciplinary agile team, using MoSCoW principles
  • Deliver digital services to at least a AA WCAG 2.0 web accessibility standard
  • Delivering rapid development of iterative prototypes, informed by UX testing
  • Scoping of existing technical architecture
  • Demonstrable experience of website development that utilises a user-centric approach
  • Evidence of website development which supports a variety of rich media
  • Demonstrable experience of redesign and redeployment of responsive websites to mobile-first standards
  • Demonstrate experience of redesign and redeployment of websites with a high volume of users and content
  • Experience of working with Drupal, and ability to build modules to increase the functionality beyond what is available from the community
  • Experience offering website maintenance service level agreements
  • Building agile and development capability within existing teams
  • Demonstrate impeccable design credentials
  • Experience in creating robust and sustainable website user personas
  • Experience in implementing an effective internal search engine and best-practice SEO
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • Experience in upgrading websites to Drupal 8
  • Experience in implemeting Solr and/or Elasticsearch
  • Experience in implemeting HTML publications

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 3
• Proposal criteria:
  • Technical solution
  • Approach and methodology
  • How the approach or solution meets user needs
  • How the approach or solution meets your organisation’s policy or goal
  • Estimated timeframes for the work
  • How they’ve identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them
  • Team structure
  • Value for money
• 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 other team members
  • Be comfortable standing up for their discipline
  • Be able to empower clients to become more self-sufficient
• Payment approach: Capped time and materials
• Assessment methods:
  • Written proposal
  • Case study
  • Work history
  • Reference
  • Presentation
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  40%

  Cultural fit

  20%

  Price

  40%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. Please can you confirm if the successful agency is expected to work onsite as in the overview it states "No specific location, eg they can work remotely" however in work setup "7 Holbein Place, London SW1W 8NR" is listed. Thanks: We expect the majority of development work to be carried out offsite.; ; However, the inevitable key stakeholder meetings and workshops will need to take place onsite.
• 2. Would you be open to the use of other CMS or will it be strictly Drupal?: It has been decided that we will continue with Drupal.
• 3. You've stated Drupal 8 for the new site - are there any other specific technologies or specific hosting platform requirements you have?: Both Drupal 7 and 8 will be considered - depending on supplier recommendations. Hosting will be likely via AWS in a separate tender document.
• 4. Will content and site structure be changing from the current site?: Yes - in response to user research and changing organisation priorities.
• 5. Is the login/my account area included as the application process currently sits on another URL?: The application portal is a separate website and not included in this tender. However, evaluating the current single sign-on set-up between the two websites is included.
• 6. Are there any integrations we need to be aware of?: We currently utilise dotmailer as our emarketing package. All other integrations are included in the tender.
• 7. Do you expect content migration to be included as part of the project?: Yes - for relevant content-types that are to be archived. Some content will need to be rewritten and this will be done in-house.
• 8. Will the user accounts and forum content need to be migrated?: Yes.
• 9. Please can clarify how you expect the project to be run.: We will need more than an MVP website ready for Jan 2019 so agile process pre-live will probably not be sufficient. However, we can keen to embed agile processes into the website for its post-live lifecycle.
• 10. Can you let us know which Drupal module is currently being used for the forum?: The primary modules are Advanced Forum in conjunction with the core Forum module. Our live chats make use of Disqus. Some others are utilised for relatively minor specific features.
• 11. Is there any of the “ongoing Quantitative UX research of our applicant and grantee audiences” available to be shared at this stage?: This will be shared with the successful applicant.
• 12. As this site is to support the launch of a new funding framework and corporate strategy is there any documentation that outlines the general direction of this strategy and how it relates to potential KPI’s for the website.: The only items in the public domain are those located here: https://www.hlf.org.uk/about-us/our-strategy.
• 13. Are there any existing metrics (KPI’s) available for the site and/or expected improvements in performance post launch of the new site?: We currently have over 100,000 users per quarter. I am afraid anything else can only be shared with the successful applicant.
• 14. Would you consider alternative online community platforms such as Telligent Community?: We are open to all solutions. However, they will need to be future-proofed, integrate seamlessly into the website and adhere to WCAG 2.0 AA conformance.