Awarded to Gate One

Start date: Monday 25 February 2019
Value: £53,610
Company size: SME

Westminster City Council; Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea

Bi-Borough IT Strategy Acceleration

20 Incomplete applications

15 SME, 5 large

34 Completed applications

28 SME, 6 large

• Published: Monday 28 January 2019
• Deadline for asking questions: Monday 4 February 2019 at 11:59pm GMT
• Closing date for applications: Monday 11 February 2019 at 11:59pm GMT

Overview

• Summary of the work: Work with the Bi-Boroughs to deliver a IT strategy and roadmap to help us deliver value to our frontline teams and citizens.
• Latest start date: Monday 25 February 2019
• Expected contract length: 2 months
• Location: London
• Organisation the work is for: Westminster City Council; Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea

About the work

• Why the work is being done: Westminster City Council and Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea are running a complex portfolio of IT change programmes across (i) Growth Planning & Housing, City Management & Communities IT Programmes, (ii) Adult Social Care, (iii) Children's Services, and (iv) corporate.; ; The authorities are looking to carry out a rapid IT strategy project before the end of the financial year, which also aligns and develops a clear roadmap for delivery.
• Problem to be solved: We need to develop an aligned and owned strategy across IT and Service Delivery Areas, at speed to ensure we are set up to deliver.
• Who the users are and what they need to do: As a Senior Responsible Owner I need to be able to understand the IT Strategy for both auhthorities so that I can manage prioritisation and continously improving outcomes
• Early market engagement: None conducted
• Any work that’s already been done: Number of existing initiatives underway across IT
• Existing team: IT Leadership Team
• Current phase: Discovery

Work setup

• Address where the work will take place: 5 Strand, London
• Working arrangements: It is imperative that you work closely and collaboratively with the internal team. Knowledge transfer into existing teams is a necessary outcome of this work. We therefore expect you to be co-located with the team at least 3 days per week and work collaboratively through digital tools.
• Security clearance: None required

Additional information

• Additional terms and conditions: None

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 recent demonstrable experiencing of challenging and advising IT leadership teams on the development of IT strategies, conducted in the last 3 years.
  • Provide recent demonstrable experience and demonstrated methodologies to shape and run leadership alignement events, to collaborately build and gain buy in for an integrated strategy.
  • Significant experience of designing and implementing IT and digital transformations
  • Particular focus and specialism on transforming the customer experience and touchpoints, using digital technologies
  • Strong background in designing IT portfolios and integrated IT Transformation Roadmaps
  • Strong working knowledge and experience of Local Government policy and IT needs
  • Supplier must have experience designing services for users with low digital literacy.
• Nice-to-have skills and experience:
  • Supplier must provide evidence of delivering at scale.
  • Supplier must provide evidence of delivering at pace.

How suppliers will be evaluated

• How many suppliers to evaluate: 3
• Proposal criteria:
  • Technical Solution
  • Approach & mehtodology
  • Value for money
  • How they’ve identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them
  • Estimated timeframes for the work
• Cultural fit criteria:
  • Ensure there is a "one team" culture and ways of working between the supplier and the Authority's leadership team
  • Highly collaborative approach to the IT discovery and shaping of key strategic themes
  • Ability to quickly build strong and trusted relationships with a diverse range of stakeholders
• Payment approach: Capped time and materials
• Assessment methods: Written proposal
• Evaluation weighting:

  Technical competence

  60%

  Cultural fit

  10%

  Price

  30%

Questions asked by suppliers

• 1. The deadline for the previous listing #8891 of this opportunity was Feb 4. For avoidance fo doubt, can you confirm the deadline is now Feb 11?: I was not given a choice on end date this time.
• 2. This opportunity was previously listed as a 'specialist' role.Are you open to suppliers that can satisfy the outcome with a single skilled specialist rather than with a team?: Yes, if they meet the requirements
• 3. Could you confirm the IR35 status please?: This would be out of scope for IR35 as we are looking for a fixed cost.
• 4. Is there a current incumbent and if so will they be reapplying?: There is no incumbent
• 5. Do you have a budget in mind for this piece of work please?: Not at this point in time. We are obviously looking for value for money.
• 6. Who will be the senior responsible owner?: The Senior Responsible Officer is the HEad of Enterprise IT Governance.
• 7. What are the existing IT initiatives?: We are currently running a complex portfolio of strategic enablers to support both boroughs in the delivery of both customer-facing and frontline-facing services including new models for Mobile Working, Highways & Parking, multi-channel strategy to support a single customer view of services, new functionality to support practitioners in Children’s Services, Self-Service, re-platforming of services, Cloud migration and transition of Housing services into corporate IT.
• 8. What are the business and commercial goals for this piece of work?: The aim is to have a strategy for IT
• 9. What is the estimated budget for this project?: Please see the answer to Question 5
• 10. For the range of your requirements we need to engage several consultants. Do you have an expectation of the team size on our side?: No
• 11. Do you have a view on the types of skillsets you expect the individual consultants to bring?: We would expect them to have a clear understanding of IT, how the department works and how to set strategy
• 12. What is the estimated budget for this project?: Please see the answer to question 5
• 13. Have you performed any discovery activity, such as user research, to determine the needs of your users – residents, businesses, staff, management? These are essential inputs into a local authority's IT strategy. If yes, will these be made available to the awarded supplier?: The successful supplier will have access to a broad range of senior stakeholders including members of the Executive team, Councillors, Senior Project managers aligned to Council services, the IT Leadership team, project documents and other information in the public domain.
• 14. Are you working with any existing suppliers in relation to this tender opportunity? If you are, who are they?: Please see the answer to question 4
• 15. Who from your team will be scoring applications for this opportunity and what positions do they hold?: The Senior Responsible Officer and the IT Contract Manager will be scoring the responses.
• 16. Please can you provide details of what the next steps are following this initial application i.e. deadlines for the written proposal/if there will be an interview and when?: The deadline will be dependant on the winning suppliers proposal, but it is expected that it will be completed within 3 months of the start date. There may be a presentation, but this will be determined based on the quality of the bids submitted, if there is enough information in the bids, then it may not be necessary to meet with bidders. No dates have been set at this point in time.
• 17. Are you flexible about the supplier being co-located with the team at least 3 days per week? We understand the importance of being on-site for activities that require physical presence in order to get the best results, eg user/stakeholder workshops, however, utilising distributed working practices and tools have proven cost-effective and have delivered exceptional results for many organisations.: I am afraid that we cannot be flexible on the three days on site.
• 18. Can you host a call with suppliers about this opportunity where we can have a live Q&A and the discussion notes are shared on this tender ad? This has proven helpful on other DM opportunities.: Unfortunately we are unable to accommodate this request.
• 19. Please can you provide more information regarding your “Supplier must provide evidence of delivering at scale.” nice-to-have requirement? What are your expectations of this in terms of sizes of teams that might need to be deployed?: Inviting bidders to demonstrate previous (similar) experiences including evidence of engagements delivered at scale. It is an opportunity for bidders to complement its response to the ‘Technical Competence’ criteria - the Council’s objective is for the supplier to produce an outcome based on the problem to be solved. It is for bidders to determine the appropriate size and skill set(s) required of their teams to deliver this.