Awarded to InterQuest Group (UK) Ltd

Start date: Tuesday 31 July 2018
Value: £1,000,000
Company size: SME

Ministry Of Housing Communities and Local Government

SAP Technical Project/BAU Specialists: Support and Development

2 Incomplete applications

0 SME, 2 large

3 Completed applications

2 SME, 1 large

• Published: Wednesday 20 June 2018
• Deadline for asking questions: Wednesday 27 June 2018 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Wednesday 4 July 2018 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: Ad-hoc support of discreet and defined work packages. Supporting the delivery of a number of internal IT projects/change, requirements may range from weeks to months and suppliers should be able to provide flexible resources at request. Previous MHCLG experience would be desirable.
• Latest start date: Monday 9 July 2018
• Expected contract length: 2 years
• Location: South East England
• Organisation the work is for: Ministry Of Housing Communities and Local Government

About the work

• Why the work is being done: To support MHCLG's SAP Business Solutions Team in the delivery of a number of significant IT projects, including IT Modernisation (SAP Migration/Integration) and SAP Cloud discovery work streams.
• Problem to be solved: To ensure business continuity of MHCLG's SAP ERP System, whilst the department transitions through disruptive technical infrastructure changes. MHCLG's SAP system is a shared critical business system for MHCLG, PINS and VTS with over £50bn of transactions processed annually through the production systems and a user base of approx. 2500. The in-house MHCLG SAP team require specialist technical skills to maintain, develop and enhance the existing solution, advise on DR improvements and assist in upgrade readiness planning from ECC6.
• Who the users are and what they need to do: MHCLG's SAP System (HR, Finance, Procurement) is accessed by 2500 Employees/Users. SAP is key in facilitating and supporting the delivery of the Ministry's strategic priorities.
• Existing team: MHCLG’s business critical SAP system is developed and maintained by an in-house team in the Finance Shared Services Division. The team are responsible for SAP functionality development/change and the underlying SAP Architecture and Infrastructure on a rapidly changing IT network infrastructure. The team have skills and experience to run the current SAP solution but are supplemented by the expertise of experienced IT Specialists, who provide a wider range of technical services and expertise. Without these additional skills, MHCLG will be unable to deliver the Continuous Improvement Programme and wider MHCLG Digital Transformation Projects.
• Current phase: Discovery

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: Primary Location: Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire; Remote working will be considered, depending on the demands of the work required and can be agreed with the supplier.
• Working arrangements: Travel/expenses to the primary site cannot be charged to MHCLG. Weekend Out Of Hours working should be expected/covered at no extra cost and within the rates of the contract.; Mixed site/remote working as required and to be agreed, with regular communication, project plan reviews and progress.
• Security clearance: SC Clearance in place for immediate start (no SAP or System administrators can have access to the SAP SRP without a min of SC level clearance). ; You will also be expected to complete mandatory online training before accessing any of the SAP systems or related servers/applications.

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:
  • Senior SAP Basis DBA Specialism (ECC6 to S4/Hana)
  • Senior SAP Authorisations Specialism
  • Certified Unix (Solaris/Suse/Redhat) /Oracle Database Administrator
  • SAP BW for HR Specialism
  • Practical and hands on SAP Experience
  • Ability to apply expertise to enable decision making/stakeholder engagement
  • Able to provide like for like or suitable resources at short notice
  • Have capacity to provide resources to start 30th June
  • Windows SQL Server Database Administrator (2012 or higher)
  • Experience of SAP HR Renewal 2.0
  • Windows Server Administrator (2012 or higher)
  • Server Virtualisation Administrator (VMWARE, HyperV)
  • Cloud Architecture Specialist (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud)
  • Cloud DevOps Specialists
  • Experience of SAP HR Renewal 2.0
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • SAP Specialists - Minimum of 5 Years in their SAP Specialism
  • SAP or IT Projects: Minimum of 5 Full Project Lifecycles
  • Experience of a leading role in a SAP Multi Tiered environment
  • Worked within Government organisations

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 3
• Proposal criteria:
  • TECHNICAL COMPETENCE WEIGHTING (55%)
  • 1) Provide evidence of required levels of skills requested by MHCLG (25%)
  • 2) Provide evidence that resources understand software and security best practice (10%)
  • 3) Demonstrate understanding of Government IT networks (10%)
  • 4)Able to demonstrate the ability to provide tactical resources to support discreet strategic work (10%)
  • Scoring Criteria - All of the above (1-4) will be scored indvidually using the following Criteria:
  • Score 0 = Failed to provide confidence that the proposal will meet the requirements. An unacceptable response with serious reservations.
  • Score 25 = A Poor response with reservations. The response lacks convincing detail with risk that the proposal will not be successful in meeting all the requirements.
  • Score 50 = Meets the requirements – the response generally meets the requirements, but lacks sufficient detail to warrant a higher mark.
  • Score 75= A Good response that meets the requirements with good supporting evidence. Demonstrates good understanding.
  • Score 100=An Excellent comprehensive response that meets the requirements. Indicates an excellent response with detailed supporting evidence and no weaknesses resulting in a high level of confidence.
  • PRICING WEIGHTING (40%): Provide day rate for each of the required for the following skills/resources : BASIS DBA, SAP Authorisations, UNIX/Oracle DBA, Windows Server DBA and SAP BW
  • Each Day rate will be multiplied by 100 days, the sum of these will then be used to calculate the weighting achieved for price:
  • Score = (Lowest Total Cost / Total Cost) x 40% (maximum mark available)
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Cutural Fit (4%) Scoring
  • Demonstrate how you have worked with a public sector team (1.25%)
  • Demonstrate transparent and collaborative decision making (1.25%)
  • Demonstrate taking responsibility for workstreams (1.25%)
  • Ability to apply expertise and challenge to enable effective decision making
  • Please note, the same scoring criteria in "Proposed Criteria" will be applied to assess cultural fit
• Payment approach: Time and materials
• Assessment methods: Written proposal
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  55%

  Cultural fit

  5%

  Price

  40%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. From a SAP Security perspective how many individuals are you looking for and what size of team are you expecting to build?: We will need ad-hoc support for specific SAP Authorisations changes/support. We have an in-house team, and require resources to provide additional technical support. So rather than a team, the requirement is for a supplier to provide individuals on an ad-hoc basis to complement the existing in-house team.
• 2. Will the Ministry sponsor SC clearance if resources do not currently have it?: As the latest start date has been set as Monday 9 July 2018, it would not be possible to complete clearances in time for the commencement date. Therefore all resource would need to have clearances in place.