Occupational Maps - Development and Live

Tender description

Summary of the work Deliver a quality Occupational Maps product, on time and to budget providing the necessary skills to support the IfATE. Expected Contract Length 2 years initial term with the option to extend by 6 months Latest start date Monday 12 September 2022 Budget Range Circa £1M Why the Work is Being Done The Skills for Jobs White Paper (published Jan 2021) outlined the intention, that the future of the technical education system will be based on employer needs with the substantial majority of post-16 technical and higher technical education, and training aligned to occupational standards, will be set by the Institute and developed and approved by employers. The Occupational Maps will be the cornerstone for these reforms. Currently the Maps represent apprenticeships. To deliver on the ambition of the white paper and the current skills and post-16 education bill, the Institute has committed to extend the scope of the maps to all ‘occupations’ that can be accessed through the high quality technical education options that enable access into these occupations. The intention is that the occupational maps and associated data will become the basis for the planning, development, and communication of technical education in England. The project to redevelop the maps has completed a discovery and alpha phase, the output from alpha was a coded prototype. Problem to Be Solved Develop new occupational maps which are based on occupations with technical education products aligned to an occupation. The project will be based around 3 core pillars which have been outlined as mandatory from white paper and strategic guidance: 1. representing policy outputs on the maps e.g. green occupations and developing user tools e.g. an externally facing customisable maps solution, API 2. progression e.g. occupation to occupation progression and product to product progression 3. maintenance and updating of the maps e.g. front end development and maintenance solution of progression routes/adding new occupations to the maps and quality assurance process Underpinned by a foundation of technical requirements e.g. integration with internal Umbraco site to return search results. Who Are the Users Primary Users – Employers, Higher Education Institution, Local Enterprise Partnerships, Training Provider’s, College’s, Professional Bodies, Awarding Organisation’s, and other stakeholders with a vested interest in Technical Education. Secondary Users – Learners, Careers Professionals and Parents User Goals for the Maps: - Promoting, Communicating and Engaging - Knowledge gathering - HR and Careers - Qualifications, Curriculum and Standard Development - Consultation and Reporting - Industry Innovation Work Already Done An alpha prototype has been completed and access to the hosted site will be provided to successfully shortlisted suppliers. Current Occupational Maps - https://www.instituteforapprenticeships.org/occupational-maps/ Existing Team Product Owner, Technical Lead (internal), Service Designer, 2x User Researchers, Data Scientist Current Phase Beta Skills & Experience • Proven experience of delivering high profile creative web based services, of this scale, that meet user goals and business requirements and are accessible to W3CAG standards. • Full understanding and demonstrable experience in planning and running beta development. • Proven experience of working with CMS and complex data sets from multiple sources e.g. Umbraco. • Proven experience of successfully using agile methodology to deliver a quality project outcome under a one team approach with customer. • Proven experience of developing against design standards e.g. Government Digital Service's design principles and digital service standard. • Proven experience of the setup and management of secure and quality systems and servers. • Proven experience of building API's to meet complex stakeholder arrangements. • Proven experience of supporting customers and ensure effective knowledge management and transfer. • Proven ability to mobilise teams at short notice to meet challenging project delivery timescales and developing requirements. Nice to Haves • Awareness and understanding of the Education sector and educational datasets. • Proven experience of supporting clients with lower technical expertise. • Proven experience of sharing progress, findings and developments with other teams (including other suppliers) via show and tell presentations. Work Location UK - can be worked remotely. Some travel to DFE sites may be required. Working Arrangments The successful contract must have a ‘one team’ approach with the internal project team working inside of IR35. The supplier will be responsible for managing their resource and backlog throughout the contract under a technical lead. Currently, the day-to-day delivery will be governed by standard agile delivery techniques. These will be monitored by the Product Owner, Technical Lead (supplier) and team who will be responsible for prioritising backlogs in refinement sessions. The successful supplier will need to work flexibly and provide specialists skills when needed within the project to deliver the sprint goals. Security Clearance The level of clearance for this requirement is an Enhanced DBS and BPSS, suppliers who do not currently have this will not be excluded from the process however will be expected have upon contract start. Additional T&Cs Report on work achieved within a specific sprint/month. Complete handover at the end of Beta Provide a team which will include Digital Specialists with the following team roles: Technical Lead, Software Developers (DevOps), Umbraco Developer, Tester/Quality Assurance, Front End Developer, UX designers, Instructional Designer and Online Content Writer. Ensure resilience from their side to avoid a single point of failure. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 5 Proposal Criteria • Propose how your approach will meet our objective of designing and developing occupational maps that represent the technical education landscape and meet end user goals • Demonstrate your approach and methodology to structuring data to enable the building, developing and maintaining of the proposed system • Demonstrate understanding of common risks, issues and dependencies in similar digital projects that you have delivered and experience of how these have been managed in the past. • Demonstrate your approach and methodology to selecting the right technology for a project that take's into account the overall digital and data architecture and legacy systems • Demonstrate you approach to the deployment pipelines to ensure an operable and reliable service for private and public beta and live • Proposed approach to working under a collaborative, one team approach, with the ability scale up and flex resource to respond to fluctuating requirements. • Demonstrate your approach and methodology for keeping the project on track under an agile project management methodology • Propose how you will support and ensure effective knowledge management and transfer • Evidence how you will achieve value for money throughout the contract Cultural Fit Criteria Support educational attainment relevant to the contract, including training schemes that address skills gaps and result in recognised qualifications. (Social Value MAC2.3) Payment Approach Capped time and materials Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 40% Cultural fit 10% Price 50% Questions from Suppliers 1. which incumbent did the discovery and alpha? Professional Data Management Services (PDMS) Limited.Company No. 061568C. 2. Please can you let us know who will be evaluating the response? Evaluation panel will include - Product Owner, Senior Service Designer, Head of Digital Services and a Technical Lead 3. Whilst we understand that the standard response format is to provide a single example of where we have demonstrated the required skills / experience, there are some questions that suggest a broader view would be useful e.g. “Awareness and understanding of the Education sector and educational datasets.”. Would it be acceptable to provide more than one example in this situation? Yes, providing multiple examples is acceptable.Caution should be applied to ensure a balance between the breadth of work and the depth of response. 4. Is your existing team (Product Owner, Technical Lead (internal), Service Designer, 2x User Researchers, Data Scientist Institute) direct employees for the Institute Apprenticeships and Technical Education? Yes 5. Would your preference be for a certified Umbraco partner? No 6. Does this imply that you are looking for a partner who can directly set up and manage hosting for you in the longer term; “Proven experience of the setup and management of secure and quality systems and servers.” We are looking for a supplier with the ability set up and manage servers required for Omaps (Beta to Live), for the duration of the contract. 7. Do you have an indication of the number of API’s that would need to be built / integrated with? We expect to have at least one outbound API to be developed with a subset of data from Omaps. We are not yet sure of the total number of inbound APIs but expect at least two that are likely to be supplied from other sources (internally developer or from our website partner – to be confirmed). 8. The experience qualifier of “proven experience of building API’s to meet complex stakeholder arrangements” – does this relate to building an API that would have to fit to already existing systems and their structure? We have carried out early stakeholder research on our external user needs from our data but we’ve not yet determined what systems might consume it. We expect to continue conversations with stakeholders to determine the specific requirements as part of Beta. 9. Is the majority of the effort on the creating of the API, where it could be co-ercing a new API into a structure that existing systems can continue to read from it, rather than the vice versa? The majority of the effort for this contract is on the design and development of the web hosted occupational maps. 10. Is the coded prototype from the Alpha phase viable as a starting point for Beta development? Parts of the prototype may be built upon for Beta but this was never an intended outcome of the Alpha phase. For planning purposes assume not. 11. Will you be able to share the outputs from the Discovery and Alpha phase with applicants at the next stage? Yes 12. Within our individual 100-word responses, would you like to see one, more detailed example or multiple examples with less detail? Showcase the most relevant example or examples against the criteria with the relevant detail. The number of examples will not affect the final score. 13. Are there any specific themes or examples you’d like to see within suppliers’ responses? Showcase the most relevant example or examples against the criteria in response to the problem. 14. Can you provide a procurement schedule for this opportunity? All dates are estimates only and subject to change.Stage 1 evaluation and Moderation by 26/07/2022Stage 2 presentations - 08/08/2022 + 09/08/2022Stage 2 evaluation and moderation - 11/08/2022Contract drafting - 01/09/2022Contract start - 14/09/2022 15. Please could you indicate the scale of the current service? Within the last year (12.07.21 - 12.07.22) the occupational maps which only show apprenticeships, not the whole technical education landscape has received:Circa. 17million page views Circa. 2 million users Circa. 200,000 new users