Beta development of a new Energy Performance of Buildings Register service. copy

Tender description

Why the Work is Being Done The Department is responsible for providing a statutory service to lodge, store and retrieve Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), Air Conditioning Inspection Reports (ACIRs) and Display Energy Certificates (DECs), until at least 2021. The department is ready to commission work now, in order to ensure that there is no break in the continuity of this statutory service. Problem to Be Solved To meet the needs of the user groups (defined below) we require: • new citizen-facing service • new API access for assessors to lodge and retrieve EPB reports • a new fee payment solution • the cleansing and migration of a large amount of EPB data to the public cloud • development of an improved address matching service • a new EPB database and reporting solution. Approximately 1.25m EPCs and 140k DECs & ACIRs are lodged on the registers each year. Since 2007 20m domestic and non-domestic EPCs and 1.2m non-domestic DECs and ACIRs have been lodged. Who Are the Users Citizens • Find an up-to-date EPC report for a property • Find an assessor to do an EPC assessment on a property • Estate/letting agents need to access EPC certificates Assessors/Schemes • Lodge assessment data so that EPCs can be generated • Need to have only one valid address for properties. Data users • Identify EPC data trends • Get a bulk view of specific properties on the registers • Enable property portals to show a valid EPC graph Other interested parties: (subject to future data sharing policy) - property investment industry, property conveyance industry, construction and home improvement industry. Early Market Engagement Discovery and alpha phases have been completed. The Alpha phase was procured via the Digital Marketplace: https://www.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/digital-outcomes-and-specialists/opportunities/8241 Summary of alpha work: https://communitiesuk.github.io/mhclg-epc-alpha/ Prototype front end developed during alpha: https://mhclg-epb-prototype-04.herokuapp.com/ The successful bidder’s team will have access to existing documentation from the completed discovery and alpha work and the subject matter experts within the internal team. Work Already Done The recommendations for beta are: • Drive the development of the service and prioritisation from user research; • Continue to explore where this service sits within larger journeys for users (e.g. buying a house), and link up with other services where necessary; • Design with data - understand what data is in the service and think about what useful information this can be turned into for users; • Further investigation of the choices to be made regarding cleansing and migrating the existing EPC data from the legacy system Existing Team MHCLG will provide a Service Owner, Product Manager, Delivery Manager and Tech Lead/Technical Architect. The team will be supported on a part-time basis by the Designer and Content Designer who worked on the alpha. During beta, we are hoping to recruit a User Researcher and may recruit other agile team members. We expect flexibility in any proposed service and financial model to replace supplier team members with internal team members during the lifetime of the project. Current Phase Beta Work Location All work will be delivered at the MHCLG office located at 2 Marsham Street, London, SW1P 4DF. MHCLG will not fund travel within London, but will fund necessary travel outside of London. Working Arrangments We would prefer a co-located team in 2 Marsham Street, however team members may work remotely 1-2 days a week with agreement. Travel/expenses to the primary site in 2 Marsham Street cannot be reimbursed by MHCLG. We expect the supplier to work using agile methodology. The supplier will also be expected to work openly. Security Clearance CTC or above is desirable for suppliers as non-CTC staff require escorting on site. There is no requirement for supplier personnel to be security cleared. BPSS clearance will be required to access MHCLG's ICT systems. Please make it clear whether staff have CTC security clearance or not when submitting responses. Additional T&Cs 1. All materials/outputs derived from the contract shall be the property of MHCLG; 2. GDPR requirements will be discussed and agreed once the successful supplier has been notified (as part of discussions to agree the wording of the call-off contract); 3. Non-disclosure agreement will also be required to deliver this requirement. Skills & Experience With examples, provide evidence of your experience in working with a multi-disciplinary team on agile projects of similar size, complexity and timelines as outlined in the Government Service Standard With evidence, provide details in delivering and supporting a high volume, transactional, web-based service to the Digital Service Standard, including compliance with WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility guidelines and GDPR With examples, provide details of developing and delivering secure/scalable and robust cloud-based services including a continuous-integration(CI) pipeline, live service monitoring/alerting and knowledge of system security risks and pragmatic mitigation With examples, provide evidence of your expertise in using Terraform for infrastructure-as-code With examples, provide evidence of your experience of building secure RESTful APIs with comprehensive test coverage With examples, provide details of your expertise in migrating and cleansing large amounts of data from legacy servers to cloud-based storage using an Extract, Transform and Load (ETL) procedure With examples, provide details of your understanding of the challenges associated with working with address data and UPRNs, and approaches to overcoming these challenges Nice to Haves With examples, provide details of your axperience in taking on a beta where you did not complete the alpha With examples, provide details of your experience of bringing an agile mindset and principles to teams who are new to Agile With examples, provide details of your experience of publishing data to open data standards No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria Proposed approach and methodology – including technical proposal Demonstrating an understanding of our requirements Estimated and credible time-frames for the work Team structure, including skills and experience of individuals and their relevance Identifying risks and dependencies, and offering approaches to manage them Demonstrating value for money How the approach or solution meets user needs How you will ensure smooth transition and knowledge transfer to the live service team Cultural Fit Criteria Experience of successful collaborative working as part of a mixed supplier-client delivery team sharing knowledge within the team Experience of delivering in an open, collaborative way according to the principles of the Government Service Design Manual Identifying risks and dependencies, and offering approaches to manage them Demonstrate establishing rapport with stakeholders, keeping them informed and managing their expectations Demonstrate simplicity (e.g. do less but better, explaining complex issues in a clear, simple way, break down and prioritise complex issues). Team structure, including CVs of team members including dates Experience of complex, multi-format, bulk data migration and data cleansing. Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method Written proposal Case study Work history Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers Budget range a budget is capped between the range of £900k - £1m for completion and successful delivery of this project.