Home Office Client Side Technical Architecture

Tender description

Summary of the work To develop, implement and maintain the technical architecture capability for HO DDaT portfolios, programmes and projects, in relation to the following areas: • Architecture leadership and governance • Enterprise architecture • Application architecture • Integration architecture • Information architecture • Infrastructure architecture • Service architecture Expected Contract Length Commence no later than May 2017 and expire not later than 30th April 2019. Latest start date 1st May 2017 Budget Range The Budget range is between £6m to £8m excluding VAT for a period of 2 years. For the purposes of the price evaluation only, it should be assumed that all team roles will be required for 100 working days. Separate day rates for each role should be supplied, Statement of works will be agreed periodically with the supplier on a fixed price, capped, or T&M basis with agreed deliverables. The initial statement of work is budgeted at up to £1m but will depend on the actual statement of work and deliverables agreed after contract award. Why the Work is Being Done Home Office DDaT has a requirement for the procurement of a service to deliver specialist client side technical architecture capabilities. Problem to Be Solved To provide specialist architecture advice, leadership and governance for HO DDaT portfolios, programmes and projects. HO DDaT portfolios, programmes and projects tend to follow an agile approach, so architects need to be proficient at managing delivery in this context with appropriate design & control. Who Are the Users The Immigration IT Portfolio is responsible for maintaining and improving current and future immigration IT services. We are helping to deliver the future of immigration. Early Market Engagement There is no pre market enagement. Existing Team Technical architects need to be able to operate within a hub a spoke governance model. This is applied across HO DDaT in order to strike the balance between autonomy of programme and project teams within a wider portfolio, but also to allow for some central structure in design and implementation. Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Are you able to provide resources with at least 5 years experience and deep technical expertise across a broad spectrum of architecture disciplines: Enterprise, application, integration, information, infrastructure, service. • Provide demonstrable experience of technical governance within an agile delivery lifecyle, ensuring gating processes are followed, design and code reviews are performed and architectural issues / risks are appropriately addressed. • Provide evidence of resources capable of shaping and leading the overall enterprise architecture for HO DDaT portfolios, programmes and projects using open standards (such as TOGAF) • Provide evidence of resources capable of developing, implementing and maintaining an architecture roadmap and the supporting implementation plan. • Provide evidence of resources capable of architecting solutions within a large scale Java-based application environment using modern software architecture approaches (such as RESTful APIs and micro-services). • Provide evidence of resources capable of architecting solutions within a large scale transactional and analytical data environment, utilising Big Data/MPP technologies (such as Hadoop, HBase and Kafka). • Provide evidence of resources capable of architecting solutions for large scale infrastructure deployments on Cloud technologies. • Please confirm that the proposed teams can co-locate with the current team in Croydon • Please provide evidence of teams of up to 25 people comprising of Enterprise Architects, Application, Integration, Information, Infrastructure and Service Architects can be deployed. Nice to Haves • Provide evidence of resources with experience of architecting and maintaining enterprise solutions in AWS cloud environments, with knowledge of AWS Policies, Security Groups, VPC creation and peering. • Provide evidence of resources with experience of cloud security concepts and best practices. Work Location London and Croydon Working Arrangments Your response should set out how you could maintain the availability of your services over time, the ability to respond to immediate surge requirements. The Home Office reserves the right to both extend and shorten the services provision period, subject to discussion with the preferred supplier(s). The team is expected to work across the multiple sites as required. Expenses will conform to HO internal policies and will not be payable to Westminster, Croydon, or Heathrow Security Clearance Service Provider personnel need to be compliant with BPSS as a minimum, and CTC clearance if working in Home Office buildings. Depending on the nature of the role, if escalated and/or privileged access is necessary then there may be a requirement for SC clearance, and in certain circumstances, DV clearance. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • All essential and nice to have requirements will be evaluated further as part of the overall proposal criteria below • Evaluation criteria have 8 categories: Specific Competencies 35%, Plan for initial phase 15%, Risk Management 15%, Ability to scale capability 10%, Performance Management 10%, Methodology 5%, Policy 5%, Security 5% • Specific Competencies: Includes all essential and nice to have technology criteria • Specific Competencies: Domain knowledge of business requirements and issues • Specific Competencies: Ability to transfer to Business as Usual • Security: Compliance with people security requirements • Methodology: Agile - Government Digital Service • Policy: Cloud - Open Source - IPR and Licensing • Plan: Quality of delivery plan for first phase of engagement and statement of work • Scale Capability: Capability of increasing delivery or service capability in the medium to long term • Performance: Delivery and Service management reliability and repeatability - Client reporting and Quality management • Risk Management: Approach of delivering scope and scale of requirements to the overall contract scope and project plan over contract life. Cultural Fit Criteria Cultural Fit: Stakeholder Management - One Team approach - Development of Client capability - People Development - Innovation and Value for Money Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 65% Cultural fit 5% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers 1. The response deadline is a bank holiday, is this the closing date going to remain on Friday? The close date shall remain Friday 14th April 2017. 2. Please confirm does this work fall within the off payroll IR35 Legislation? The intention of this contract is the provision of a service with defined outcomes where the supplier is responsible for the deliverables, risk and associated individuals. If this was to be executed in this manner then it would probably be deemed outside of the intermediaries legislation but could be affected by factors outside of HO control. HO assumes no liability and will grant no guarantee of status. Suppliers should note that contractors may be detrimental unless this is part of a managed supply chain. 3. Please can you explain the evidence you are looking for when the request "provide evidence of resources" is made? Are you specifically looking for definitive, named resources, or experienced by the bidder more widely, in a corporate context? Your response should detail relevant experience by the bidder in a wider context. What was delivered, how it was delivered, approximate size of requirement and how many resources delivered the requirement. Your response should also detail the resources that are available immediately for the start of the proposed requirement. The experience of similar project or projects delivered which is most relevant and similar to the HO requirement should be detailed in your answer. 4. With regards to the second evaluation questions around demonstrable experience of technical governance within an agile delivery lifecycle, three criteria (ensuring gating processes, design and code reviews and architectural issues / risks are addressed) are specified. Please can you outline how the 100 word answer should answer these; should they have individual examples, or a single example covering all three? If the former case is correct, please indicate how many words is desirable for each criteria. The second set of award criteria relates to suppliers that are invited to provide a written proposal. These are the criteria that will be used to measure responses at bid stage not at initial phase. 5. Are we able to provided condensed profiles (i.e. 100 words) of relevant consultants for each of the areas mentioned by way of evidence? This is correct. Condensed relative and key information should be detailed. Further information will be provided to suppliers that are invited to provide a written response.