Development, Hosting and CMS for Belfast Region City Deal website

Tender description

Summary of the work Design and build a mobile responsive and accessible website for Belfast Region City Deal (BRCD) and implement on a web CMS, which must be hosted and highly usable. Provide the ability for BRCD to add unknown factors as programme progresses. Provide support and maintenance services for 2 years. Expected Contract Length 2 years with option for 2 years renewal. Must be ready to go live by the end of October 2021. Latest start date Monday 20 September 2021 Budget Range The total available budget for the build is £29,950 (Exc. VAT) including hosting, support and maintenance for the two-year contract. Why the Work is Being Done The Belfast Region City Deal (BRCD) is a collaboration between the Belfast Region partner councils, Queen’s University Belfast, Ulster University and the regional Further Education Colleges alongside NI and UK Governments. The NI Executive and the UK Government have each committed £350 million to the BRCD fund and the BRCD partners will contribute a further £150 million. By leveraging additional private sector investment the Partners will deliver a programme with an overall value well in excess of £1 billion. There is currently no standalone website for the BRCD programme. Currently information is on Belfast City Council’s website (https://www.belfastcity.gov.uk/belfastregioncitydeal) and partner sites. An Innovation website (https://www.brcd-innovation.co.uk/) has also been created by Ulster and Queen’s University as BRCD partners. BRCD is moving into delivery phase and it is important to complete the build of a user-friendly website. The site will be the primary source of information relating to the BRCD and will house programme documents and key governance documents which are currently not publicly available online. The look and feel of the site needs to reflect the scale and ambition of the Deal. It will be a communications tool to help secure buy in, attract investment and build and maintain momentum. Problem to Be Solved The BRCD website should provide a modern tool, implemented on a web CMS to inform stakeholders of the BRCD programme that meets all, but not limited to the following requirements; • User-centred, allowing access to information in an engaging, interactive and accessible format depending on the device that is being used. • Website is hosted externally. • Document upload and viewing, mobile responsive and accessible website. • Embedded videos and inclusion of high-resolution images. • The new site should be designed and built in such a way that the website and associated functionality can be maintained and content updated by the BRCD PMO, Belfast City Council or another 3rd party following the go live date and at the end of the 2 year contract. • Further development of the website may be required as the programme progresses to improve functionality and possible integration particularly within the E&S element of the programme. This additional service will not be required as part of this commission but the website should be developed in a way that allows for additional functionality to be added. Who Are the Users Our audience is made up of BRCD partners, NI and UK Government departments and agencies, Investors, Private Sector, Political Representatives, Senior Civil Servants and general public. • Users will expect a modern, responsive and intuitive website with access to the latest information on the BRCD Programme. • A website this is easy to navigate and is accessible. It is important that links to partner sites are embedded on the site to allow users to access partner sites for further detail on individual projects. • Need to be able to share information as the programme progresses and allow regular updates to be added to increase awareness of the benefits that the BRCD will deliver for the region. • Provide a search/filter facility for easy access to key documents and key governance decisions. • Provide information for users on upcoming opportunities (jobs, investment, events). • Enable the BRCD PMO to quickly and easily update content on the website so that it's relevant and up to date for our users. • Ability for PMO to analyse site performance (i.e via Google analytics). Early Market Engagement Not applicable Work Already Done The current BRCD page (https://www.belfastcity.gov.uk/belfastregioncitydeal) contains high-level information on the BRCD programme. The Programme Management Office (PMO) will engage with partners to determine the content of the new website based on a refresh of the content that already exists on both this site and partner platforms. There is an agreed BRCD look and feel which will also be refreshed via the existing governance structure and the artwork files can be provided. We would expect the successful supplier to help fully develop the scope and requirement and overall web presence/design. Existing Team The supplier will work with the BRCD Programme Management Office with support from the Chair of the BRCD Communications Forum, BCC Communications team and Digital Services department. Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Experience in delivering a robust, high availability, hosted (cloud based) Website CMS. • A back-office easy to use web CMS for content management and publication, that scales to handle data, stored and published in a variety of content format types. • CMS Security admin and access control, allowing authorised users to perform full CRUD operations on all data and objects related to website activities (page creation, navigation, content publication, integration). • Provide CMS training and knowledge transfer to content publishers and technical administrators, allowing a self-sufficient approach to develop the Website CMS components reacting to future business or legal requirements. • User-friendly and responsive web design across a range of devices. • Experience in creating a visually stimulating design. • Compliant with current (and future) website accessibility standards adhering to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (currently WCAG 2.1 AA). • Compliant with Public Sector Bodies (Websites and Mobile Applications) (No. 2) Accessibility Regulations 2018. • Experience in providing managed hosting. • Experience of search engine optimisation and improving the search engine post launch. • GDPR compliance following ICO guidelines, with interactive cookie consent banners. • Using primary research and user-centred design approach, design, develop and implement wireframes and templates using UX design concepts and principles, to create an exceptional responsive digital user experience. • Testing of website (accessibility and usability), throughout design and development cycle using a range of devices and assistive technology used by their various audiences. User testing of integrated applications. • Adherence and compliance to hosted (cloud based) websites (CMS) that achieve and conform to the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre cloud security guidance as stated in the 13 IaaS principles. • Adherence and compliance for website (CMS) best practice web application security standards, as listed by the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP). • Provide business continuity processes and procedures ensuring minimal service disruption; have effective disaster recovery procedures to implement RPO and RTO; with high availability service levels of 99.999% operational uptime. Nice to Haves • Experience of working on partnerships websites. • Provide technology that promotes digital inclusion within the website CMS, through use of multi-lingual, sign languages, and other forms of communication. • Provide expertise regarding Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO) best practices to help increase visitor usage of our corporate website, and SEO techniques. • Provide online booking functionality within the context of a corporate website (CMS), enabling users (and groups) to book attendance at events (free). • Have business intelligence and site analytics capabilities (website data, performance monitoring and optimisation, journey analytics, usage and browsing traffic activity) to obtain customer insights for service improvement. • Experience operating a Support Helpdesk to answer queries and raise tickets during hours of operation. Work Location Belfast City Council, City Hall Belfast, and 9 Adelaide, 9-21 Adelaide Street, Belfast. Suppliers can work remotely but will be expected to attend initiation meeting and progress update meetings as required (at this stage this will be virtually). Working Arrangments The development and design work may be done remotely. The supplier must be available for initiation meeting and meetings to update on key tasks to ensure swift issue resolution, project milestone achievement, and that timescales remain on target (to be done virtually). We expect there to be some meetings to agree deliverables and for discussion on design options/layouts and functions of the site. We will require regular status updates detailing progress, achievement of milestones and any issues that may impact the project. Once the website is live, then it is expected that most contact would be by email or phone. Security Clearance No security clearance required. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • How the solution meets our essential requirements, showing a clear understanding of our brief. (50% weighting) • Technical solution of equivalent scale offered with two previous examples of successfully delivering and implementing in a public sector organisation. (25% weighting) • Project management approach and methodology, with capacity to successfully deliver within our completion timeframe. (25% weighting) Cultural Fit Criteria • Work effectively and as part of a team with Belfast City Council and BRCD Partners. (33.33% weighting) • Take responsibility for delivery of work, and build positive successful relationships by sharing knowledge and experiences. (33.33% weighting) • Be transparent, collaborative, and innovative in terms of problem solving and decision making. (33.33% weighting) Payment Approach Fixed price Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 64% Cultural fit 6% Price 30% Questions from Suppliers 1. When would the earliest start date be possible?Given that the system needs to go-live by the end of October 2021, there would only be around 6-8 weeks to put live a complete CMS system, hence an earlier start would allow for more development time. Given the time required to shortlist suppliers we do not anticipate an earlier start date than the 20th September 2021. The end of October remains our preferred go live date, submissions that do not meet this timescale will still be considered, unless rejected on another ground. However, those that are able to meet the timescale will be scored accordingly.