Website provision for Wandle Housing Association

Tender description

Summary of the work Wandle Housing Association are looking for a partner to help us build and maintain an easy to update brochure website for our customers (all our interactive self-serve content is inside our portal – MyWandle), and two micro-sites – Corporate and Careers. Latest start date Monday 28 February 2022 Budget Range £10,000 - £20,000 Why the Work is Being Done Wandle’s current website was designed and implemented a number of years ago, and we are looking to re-procure our web service to make sure that it reflects our current and future ambitions, and complements our new online service – MyWandle. The content administration is carried out entirely by our small Communications team. We currently use one website to target three key audiences – our residents (primary), jobseekers, and our corporate stakeholders. Problem to Be Solved We are looking for a partner to help us build and maintain an easy to update brochure website for our residents (all our interactive self-serve content is inside our portal – MyWandle), and two micro-sites – Corporate and Careers. Who Are the Users Customer site Our customer site will cater to the needs of residents – social tenants, leaseholders and shared owners. We need to present a range of information, in a logical, well-structured site, featuring text, images and videos. We’ll need to be able to highlight key campaigns on our home page, and emergency information. Longer term, we are interested in using APIs to feed in live performance data that matters to our residents. Careers site Attracting the right people is critical to delivering our mission. Our careers site will share what it's like to work at Wandle, information about values and offer to employees, as well as hosting vacancies. We’ll need to use an API to feed vacancies in from our bulletin board – this is currently Vacancy Filler. We’d be interested to see how you could support our onboarding – could applicants apply using a form hosted by you, with the ability to save information, and log back in before submitting? Corporate site Corporate site will cater to needs of varied external stakeholders – lenders, contractors, local authority partners, the wider housing sector. The corporate site will be a brochure site, with facility to share video to tell our story. Early Market Engagement We have reviewed our current and other organisations websites to research appearance and accessibility but have had no contact with any suppliers Work Already Done Requirements have been drafted Existing Team The procurement process and appointment of a supplier would be done by the internal procurement team and the Innovation & Communications team at Wandle Housing Association. During the course of the project, the content administration would be carried out entirely by our small Communications team who you'd be reporting to and liaising with. Current Phase Discovery Skills & Experience • Have extensive experience developing websites (at least 3 websites) • Demonstrate knowledge and experience of hosting, implementing and supporting website, content management systems in public sector • Have experience balancing objectives/design with budgets • Extensive knowledge of the CMS (Content Management System) market with a client-centred approach to CMS selection • Have experience of planning, documenting and communicating the design process and concepts in a clear, concise manner • The CMS should be able to be used by non-technical staff to update content – text, images, videos, downloads etc. • The CMS should be able to have different web designs for each website and micro-site • We need to be able to create friendly URLs for SEO/keyword inclusion/print marketing • Accessibility checker - the system should make complying with W3C AA standard straightforward • Automated site map • Able to manage media – images, audio, video etc. We’d like to be able to manage our web media in the CMS • We need to have different administration levels for our users • We should be able to preview content before it is published • Ability to schedule updates for the future, or for a fixed period (auto-publish and un-publish on pre-set dates and times). • Use ReachDeck to allow users to have a range of ways to review our content or suitable alternative • Support in complying with relevant regulatory legislation, including privacy, cookies, etc. • We use Google analytics for our reporting, and our new sites will need to work with Google analytics Nice to Haves • Demonstrable provision of secure hosting environment with guaranteed 99.99% uptime • Have previous experience working with Public Sector clients Work Location Most of the delivery can be conducted remotely but some site visits may be required. Wandle Housing Association HQ Second Floor, Minerva House, Montague Cl, London SE1 9BB Working Arrangments The Wandle Housing Association procurement team are contactable between 0900 - 1700hrs Monday - Friday No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 6 Proposal Criteria • Technical Solution • Approach and Methodology • How the solution meets our needs • Estimated timeframes • How they’ve identified risks and dependencies and offered approaches to manage them • Value for money Cultural Fit Criteria • Work collaboratively with members of Comms and Innovation team • Explain reasoning for recommendations, including benefits and disbenefits • Take responsibility for the quality and timeliness of their work • Willingly share knowledge and experience with others • Be open, honest and trustworthy • Value the contribution and direction of others Payment Approach Fixed price Assessment Method • Case study • Work history • Reference Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 5% Price 35% Questions from Suppliers 1. Who will sit on the review panel? The head of our Innovations & Comms team as well as head of our IT team will sit on the review panel. 2. The current site has approx 400 pages. Do you envisage the new site & microsites having a similar number of pages?And are you looking for the supplier to build all those pages, or provide training to your team so they can build them in the CMS from templates? We think that the new sites combined will have fewer pages. We don't expect them to build all - staff can be trained to create and manage from a suite of templates that we'd like to create with the developer and our creative partners. 3. Can you confirm the following;1) You need three separate websites developed 2) Can they all have a common look and feel and just be tailored to the audience.3) Is the maximum budget of £20,000 for all three websites, and it is not £20,000 per website” 1) YES - three separate websites.2) YES - they can all have a common look and feel and just be tailored to the audience.3) £20,000 total for all three. 4. Will the inability to demonstrate knowledge and experience of hosting, implementing and supporting website, content management systems in public sector prevent suppliers from applying for this project? We implement, host and provide support for multiple sites, just not public sector. The opportunity is availaible to any supplier with the technical capabilities to deliver our requirements. Public sector experience would be ideal but there are other things we will take into consideration when evaluating each response 5. Does the £20,000 budget include or exclude hosting, ReachDeck and any other extra costs involved? Thank you. Excludes Reachdeck etc 6. Are you looking to be taken through a selection of CMSs with a view to us making a recommendation based on your requirements? We build sites in WordPress only. Does this preclude us from this process? We would be happy to see a bid using Wordpress 7. Are you looking for monthly maintenance/support? if so, for how long and is there a separate budget for it or is it part of the 10-20k range? Yes - would be seperate budget 8. Hi, do you prefer to have everything custom built or can we use the website templates from Synkd.life (and apply custom code after where necessary)?Synkd offers an integrated website builder, CRM management tool, and booking platform. We have used this solution for DIT internationally.All data is Wandles but will be stored in our cloud solutions but this will help keep costs down and also allow you to run other marketing campaigns seamlessly once trained (if relevant)... check our community.synkd.life We will work with our creative partners to produce CSS sheets 9. You mention creative partners. Is your expectation that the supplier will design and build the websites, or are you planning on sourcing designs internally or from another supplier? Our creative partner will work on style and visuals, and provide CSS style sheets to use 10. Is the £20k budget inc or ex VAT? Excluding 11. Does the £20k budget need to include the design and development of 3 sites, as well as hosting? Development through to launch 12. Is there any preference on CMS? Based on the team’s experience No not really, CMS needs to be user friendly.