Discovery, Alpha and Beta service creation to hold Temporary Bridge Solutions information

Tender description

Summary of the work Develop a checker to inform bridge owners about how they can procure temporary bridges. Expected Contract Length Discovery – 2 weeks, Alpha and Beta (combined to last 4 weeks). Total length 6 weeks. Latest start date Monday 20 January 2020 Budget Range £60-100k Why the Work is Being Done Over the last few years there have been a number of extreme weather events across the United Kingdom which has led to the disruption of transport links. This has resulted in reactive purchasing of solutions to overcome such instances. To overcome this a new service will provide bridge owners with information about which type of temporary bridge they should buy, and hold details of suppliers in their geography. Problem to Be Solved To create a new service fit for purpose in terms of usability, accessibility and in terms of housing a range of content in a number of formats. The service will be built using open source. The solution should adhere to the technology code of practice and the digital service standards and DfT’s Architectural principles. Who Are the Users Bridge owners who may use this service include:- Local Highway Authorities throughout the UK Highways England Transport Scotland Welsh Government Transport Northern Ireland Transport for London London Underground Network Rail Canal and Rivers Trust SUSTRANS (Contact names and details will be provided) The service will hold technical information which stakeholders above will have access to. They will use the site to purchase temporary bridge solutions. Early Market Engagement N/A Work Already Done There has been early engagement with temporary bridge suppliers whose technical data content will be loaded onto the new service. Bridge owners will also have some awareness of these proposals. Highways England have also developed a significant amount of technical Existing Team Gary Kemp, DfT, policy advisor, local highways maintenance Michael Lewis, Highways England, Senior Structures Advisor, Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • Demonstrable experience of delivering a citizen facing services quickly. • Demonstrate passing .Gov service assessments. • Demonstrate excellent planning, coordination, communication and project management skills Nice to Haves • Experience of working in/with teams with no/limited experience of Agile methodologies • Have demonstrable experience of working in a culture of continuous delivery and improvement Work Location The majority of the work should be conducted at the Suppliers own site. However, we would expect the Supplier to work at our offices when agreed and required. Exact days will be decided with the supplier, once the contract has been appointed. Address: Department for Transport, Great Minster House, Horseferry Road, SW1P 4DR or Highways England, Working Arrangments We expect the supplier to suggest a team that can meet the following timelines. We would like the Discovery phase to be completed within approximately 2 weeks. Alpha & Beta should be completed in 4-6 weeks. A service being fully operational by March 31st, 2020 We require weekly status updates via email and telephone detailing achievements of key milestones and issues that may impact timescales and cost. Security Clearance We would expect suppliers to possess BPSS security clearance, evidence of which will be requested at written proposal stage. Additional T&Cs CV’s will be requested from shortlisted suppliers. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Identification of all Agile Development elements (Discovery, Alpha and Beta) of the project. Identify activities and outcomes throughout and how this will inform technical development, design and content development. (15%) • Project methodology - Suppliers should identify what this process will look like throughout the agile cycle, given this is a much condensed process (18%) • What approach will be adopted and how will it meet user needs (17%) • Identification of risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them (10%) • Team structure with CV (10%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Experience of transparent and collaborative decision making (2.5%) • Demonstrable experience of working with users with low technical expertise (2.5%) • Demonstrable experience where status quo has been challenged resulting in a change of project direction and resulting in a successful value adding outcome (2.5%) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Assessment Method • Case study • Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 70% Cultural fit 8% Price 22% Questions from Suppliers 1. Due to timescales, please can you clarify whether this tender will be subject to formal GDS Assessment, or whether suppliers are just required to follow process/standards? Due to timescales, please can you clarify whether this tender will be subject to formal GDS Assessment, or whether suppliers are just required to follow process/standards? 2. With such a short contract length, can you confirm that this Service won't need to pass any GDS Service Assessments? Thank you Due to low volumes, this project will be required to pass Internal Service Assessments only. These will be light touch and will take place at the end of alpha and private beta. 3. It's disappointing to see that you've mandated the solution should be open source. Please can you state your reasons for this? We've recently built a Brexit-led service in 4 weeks for a Government agency with our COTS product, and have built many similar systems that have passed GDS assessments. GDS have been happy with our approach to open source tech and avoiding vendor lock-in, so it seems odd that you're imposing this restriction. The department has adopted the Govt. Technology Code of Practice which states:""Be open and use open sourcePublish your code and use open source software to improve transparency, flexibility and accountability.""Other reasons we have specified for a open source solution is that often COTS solutions are not customisable. And having and open source solution avoids the Department being tied into specific vendors. 4. Regarding the question: Demonstrate passing.Gov service assessments: This prevents anyone new to the DOS Framework from applying. We are a digital product design and development agency who builds functionally rich websites, tools and apps. But we havent delivered a project for.gov as yet and so havent done the assessment – even though we would pass it easily. Are you happy to exclude agencies like us wh are new to the DOS framework? Passing the Service assessment is a key deliverable of this project, and therefore it is required as a criteria for a supplier. DfT are not prescriptive as to where this experience is gained, and as such we believe this does not exclude suppliers new to the DOS framework. Suppliers are welcome to use examples from staff who were employed in the civil service, other suppliers with experience, or through having supplied via a different framework. Alternatively a bid can be submitted in partnership with another experienced supplier 5. It look like the sentence within ""Any work that’s already been done"" is missing some information...Highways England have also developed a significant amount of technical...?Can you clarify Highways England have also developed a significant amount of technical specification data about bridges 6. Will the new service undergo any formal assessments (GDS or otherwise) throughout Discovery, Alpha, Beta? Due to low volumes, this project will be required to pass Internal Service Assessments only. These will be light touch and will take place at the end of alpha and private beta 7. Is there any prescribed technology with which this service must integrate (other than the stipulation for open source)? DfT does have a preferred cloud platform. Details of the preferred platform, along with other standards, can be found in our architectural principles which will be shared upon request. Flexibility can be extended around these principles, depending on the needs of the solution. Variation from the principles will need to be agreed with an internal Architect 8. Is there any prescribed technology with which this service must integrate (other than the stipulation for open source)? DfT does have a preferred cloud platform. Details of the preferred platform, along with other standards, can be found in our architectural principles which will be shared upon request. Flexibility can be extended around these principles, depending on the needs of the solution. Variation from the principles will need to be agreed with an internal Architect 9. Is there any prescribed technology with which this service must integrate (other than the stipulation for open source)? DfT does have a preferred cloud platform. Details of the preferred platform, along with other standards, can be found in our architectural principles which will be shared upon request. Flexibility can be extended around these principles, depending on the needs of the solution. Variation from the principles will need to be agreed with an internal Architect 10. Does the DfT have a preference for how or where this solution is hosted; DfT data centre, public cloud, supplier managed etc? DfT is negotiating with an external provider to host the website 11. Has your initial discovery research identified if one user interface design can meet all user needs? No formal research has been undertaken 12. Has research been carried out with the key user groups and is this available to the team? No formal research has been undertaken 13. Is the service standalone or will it need to integrate with other existing local authority systems or Gov services? It’s stand alone 14. Are users required to authenticate before using the service? If so is there a requirement to integrate with an existing identity authentication service? service design and technology solution will be informed by the discovery activity and user research 15. Is there a requirement for an interface to allow data to be maintained on an ongoing basis? If so will the data be maintained by the bridge suppliers or by DfT staff? Data will be reviewed & updated by Highways England’s Structure Team 16. In terms of citizen facing, could you confirm if you are referring to users from the bridge owner groups that you mentioned in the "about the work" section, or are you referring to members of the public? If the former, would providing examples of similar user communities be appropriate? DfT can confirm that we are referring to users being from the bridge owners group and providing examples from similar communities would be appropriate.” 17. Could you confirm that, by “capped time and materials”, you are just referring to your having an overall budget cap and not that you are expecting the successful supplier to take on commercial risk? DfT can confirm this is an overall budget cap 18. "1. Do you have information regarding the estimated load on a daily basis for the website?2. Will the website sit behind a portal or be publicly available?3. Can you please share with us what work has been done by Highway England?" The website maybe publically available or by portal, but is subject to user research and design.