Technical Delivery Partner

Tender description

Summary of the work There is a need for a flexible supplier to respond to urgent requirements. Core capabilities include but not limited to: Business Analyst User Researcher Service Design Power BI Developer SharePoint Developer Automation Test Engineer Technical Architect Fullstack Developer Database Developer DevOps Engineer Data Scientist Data Architect Data Engineer Delivery Manager Expected Contract Length 24 months, with the option of a 12-month extension Latest start date Friday 1 April 2022 Budget Range The maximum spend under the contract will be £4 million excluding vat. There is no commitment to minimum spend over the term of the contract. Work to be issued on Statement of Work basis Why the Work is Being Done BEIS is seeking to partner with a highly skilled and proven Technical Delivery supplier with extensive knowledge of working to Government Digital standards. The supplier will be able to rapidly onboard resources within 10 days when required Problem to Be Solved This contract will fill technical and delivery capability gaps within existing and new teams, supporting a range of projects from inception through to live and continuous improvement. This will be through the delivery of outcomes based on user needs and in line with government service standards. Who Are the Users Users will vary from project to project, but broadly fall into 3 main categories. 1) BEIS and ALB internal teams 2) Businesses 3) UK Citizens Existing Team The supplier will be working with project teams in BEIS. This may comprise of a Delivery and Product Managers, Business Analyst, SRO, Service Design, User Research and Development Teams. There may be other resources, both FTE and other suppliers to align with and work closely with throughout this phase.  They will also be expected to engage with other stakeholders in BEIS Digital  i.e. the Security and Architecture teams  if and when required. Current Phase Not applicable Skills & Experience • Proven experience architecting and implementing services in GOV.UK PaaS and Azure (7%) • Proven experience of providing SC cleared resources within 10 days of request (5%) • Proven experience in successfully building services using c#, razor, MVC .net core, CSS and JavaScript (3%) • Proven experience of providing support and maintenance as a managed service (4%) • Proven ability to scale up and down resources rapidly and consistently within 10 days (5%) Work Location Though the team will be working remotely, there will a be a need to travel to the 1 Victoria Street HQ in London or other government offices when required. This may change depending on Government guidance. Travel expenses will not be reimbursed. Working Arrangments The supplier will be expected to be available during the typical working hours of the policy team (Monday to Friday 9am-5pm) in order to maximise knowledge transfer. Microsoft Teams, JIRA, Azure DevOps, Mural, Microsoft Whiteboard and Office 365 will be used for collaboration Security Clearance All team members must have BPSS as a minimum. In some cases, certain roles will require SC clearance. No. of Suppliers to Evaluate 3 Proposal Criteria • Describe your approach to working through the service life-cycle of Discovery/Alpha/Private Beta/Public Beta/Live (4%) • Describe your approach to documentation, to ensure clarity and facilitate handover (4%) • Describe your approach to working in partnership with both in-house teams and other suppliers to achieve a shared outcome (5%) • Describe your experience of building and maintaining automated pipelines in Azure DevOps using Selenium, SpecFlow and C# (5%) • Provide evidence of designing end-to-end services across a range of on-line and off-line channels for participants who are digitally excluded or have access needs (6%) • Describe your approach to developing solutions to WCAG 2.1 to AA Standard (5%) • Describe your approach to delivering secure services (5%) • Describe your approach to TDD and clean architecture (2%) Cultural Fit Criteria • Evidence of supporting health and well-being, including physical and mental health, in the workforce (2%) • Describe your social value objectives and how you intend to deliver them, including how BEIS will be able to measure them as part of the contract (8%) • Evidence of integrating into an organisation's existing ways of working ensuring a healthy working culture (5%) • Your approach to training and mentoring internal staff (5%) Payment Approach Time and materials Assessment Method Presentation Evaluation Weighting Technical competence 60% Cultural fit 20% Price 20% Questions from Suppliers 1. Who from your team will be scoring applications for this opportunity and what positions do they hold? The evaluation panel will be assembled from BEIS digital employees and a commercial officer. 2. Who is the incumbent and how long they have been the incumbent? This is a new requirement. However, future SOW may include taking work from incumbents. 3. Has any external supplier been involved in the initial scoping work? If so, who? No. The requirement is based on BEIS knowledge of the market and previous procurements. 4. Will all roles provided through this contract require SC Clearance? No, not all roles will require SC clearance as this will vary from SoW to SoW, however, the supplier should be able to supply all roles with SC clearance within 10 days if required. It is estimated BEIS will require between 20-30 roles with SC clearance over the duration of the contract. 5. Is there an incumbent supplier already delivering some or all of these requirements? No. This is a new requirement. However, future SOW may include taking work from incumbents. 6. How many and which specific roles do you need SC clearance ? It is estimated BEIS will require between 20-30 roles with SC clearance over the duration of the contract. 7. Regarding “Describe your approach to TDD and clean architecture”, can you please elaborate on clean Architecture ? Are you looking for modular, Serverless or loosely coupled architecture ? With regard to clean architecture, this refers to modular, loosely coupled architecture. 8. Any reason why you cannot conduct SC checks internally for the resources we provide ? This is not possible due to time and resource constraints. 9. Can we delay on-boarding of the SC resource ? No 10. Please elaborate on why “GOV.UK PaaS ” is essential when suppliers can exhibit experience in other public cloud such Azure or GCP or AWS ? What is specific to GOV. UK PaaS that other public cloud does not have ? The backup of GOV. UK PaaS leads to public cloud such as S3 etc. This is the approved Public Sector Cloud Hosting Platform. 11. What are the job roles of the evaluation panel please? The evaluation panel will be assembled from BEIS digital employees and a commercial officer. 12. You ask about “experience of providing support and maintenance as a managed service”. Given this is more of a short notice resource supply notice, can you give the context of Managed Service and what you mean by support and maintenance? Support and maintenance of this type of service, or support and maintenance of something else? BEIS will hand over the work to the supplier. The supplier will manage all aspects of the tasks e.g. bug fixes, enhancements and maintenance for a fixed cost. 13. Can I just check if it is only the 5 ‘Essential Skills and Experience’ questions that are required to answer at this stage?I notice that other questions are listed in the Proposal Criteria’ and ‘Cultural fit criteria’ sections but they aren’t available to be answered. Are these for the 2nd stage and therefore the only ones needed at this stage are the 5 in the ‘Essential Skills and Experience’ section? This is correct. 14. Can you confirm if shortlisted suppliers will have the opportunity to present? Suppliers will be given the opportunity to present if the need for bid clarification arises. At this point we anticipate having a maximum of 3 presentations for bid clarification. 15. What Managed services are being refeerred ? This refers to the services the supplier builds, or in the future, it could also include providing support and maintenance for other live services in BEIS digital. 16. Regarding “Describe your approach to working in partnership with both in-house teams and other suppliers to achieve a shared outcome (5%)”.. Please elaborate what approach are you expecting ? Is is delivery methodology ? BEIS is wanting to understand how you as a supplier work with internal and external teams. 17. What data does you expect SC cleared resource to handle ? This could include secret and official sensitive. 18. How many SOW’s do you plan to issue for the project and what would be the duration of each of the SoW ? We estimate there will be in the region of 20-30 SOW, with a duration of 2-6 months each. 19. Can you clarify how this opportunity aligns or differ to the recently issued Microsoft Power Platform Specialist Partner opportunity? Many of the roles are the same, for example Business Analyst, User Researcher, Power BI Developer, SharePoint Developer, Automation Test Engineer, DevOps Engineer? Please understand that each procurement is a separate entity in its own right.This procurement is geared solely to building and supporting bespoke services. The other procurement is aligned with power platform services 20. Can you clarify how this opportunity aligns or differ to the recently issued Microsoft Power Platform Specialist Partner opportunity? Many of the roles are the same, for example Business Analyst, User Researcher, Power BI Developer, SharePoint Developer, Automation Test Engineer, DevOps Engineer? Please understand that each procurement is a separate entity in its own right.This procurement is geared solely to building and supporting bespoke services. The other procurement is aligned with power platform services 21. Who is the incumbent? This is a new requirement. However, future SOW may include taking work from incumbents. 22. What roles will require SC clearance? Not all roles will require SC clearance as this will vary from SoW to SoW, however, the supplier should be able to supply all roles with SC clearance within 10 days if required.It is estimated BEIS will require between 20-30 roles with SC clearance over the duration of the contract. 23. Regarding “Proven experience of providing support and maintenance as a managed service (4%)” -Please can you explain what you mean by “support and maintenance”? BEIS will hand over the work to the supplier. The supplier will manage all aspects of the tasks e.g. bug fixes, enhancements and maintenance for a fixed cost. 24. What role/job titles be scoring/assessing this procurement piece? The evaluation panel will be assembled from BEIS digital employees and a commercial officer. 25. The Work Setup section states the team will be working remotely, though some travel to 1 Victoria Street HQ and other government offices will be required. Is onsite It is expected that the supplier will initially work in a hybrid fashion, working remotely in the UK and/or in our offices. This may change to a full-time office-based role, which could be 1 Victoria Street HQ or another government office. 26. With regard to SC clearance – does the authority envisage this will be an occasional requirement? Will the chosen supplier be expected to provide a number of SC cleared team members at one time? It is estimated BEIS will require between 20-30 roles with SC clearance over the duration of the contract. 27. Please can you clarify whether there is an incumbent for this work and, if so, who the incumbent is? This is a new requirement. However, future SOW may include taking work from incumbents. 28. In answering the questions, could you confirm whether you want one case study per question or a range of examples for each question? Please forward your most appropriate examples, noting that the system will only allow 100 words per question asked. 29. Please can you confirm if near-shoring delivery of the services will be allowed? No. Resources would need to be on-shore. 30. Hi,We realise that there is some overlap in capabilities required for this opportunity and the Microsoft Power Platform Specialist Partner opportunity.We would appreciate if BEIS could provide more guidance on the differences between the 2 engagements and how any overlaps would be managed Please understand that each procurement is a separate entity in its own right.This procurement is geared solely to building and supporting bespoke services. The other procurement is aligned with power platform services. 31. Please can you elaborate on ‘GOV.UK PaaS ‘? GOV.UK PaaS is a cloud hosting platform that's designed for the public sector 32. Please can you clarify on “AA Standard ” ? Please refer to the guidelines online 33. Can you please elaborate which roles need SC clearance ? Not all roles will require SC clearance, however, the supplier should be able to supply all roles with SC clearance within 10 days if required.It is estimated BEIS will require between 20-30 roles with SC clearance over the duration of the contract. 34. Regarding “Proven experience in successfully building services using c#, razor, MVC.net core, CSS and JavaScript (3%)”What is Razor ? Does this skillset support the incumbent supplier who is well-versed on the current delivery ? Razor is a markup syntax and commonly used in the marketplace. 35. Regarding “Proven experience of providing SC cleared resources within 10 days of request (5%)”. What kind of experience is needed apart from getting the resource from open market if not available in-house?Please specify what is the requirement? Not all roles will require SC clearance as this will vary from SoW to SoW, however, the supplier should be able to supply all roles with SC clearance within 10 days if required. 36. Who is the incumbent and how long they Who from your team will be scoring applications This is a new requirement. However, future SOW may include taking work from incumbents. 37. Who is the incumbent supplier for the program ? This is a new requirement. However, future SOW may include taking work from incumbents. 38. Who is the incumbent supplier please? This is a new requirement. However, future SOW may include taking work from incumbents. 39. Please could you list the incumbent suppliers that are currently providing the capabilities that this contract will be used for, across BEIS. This is a new requirement. However, future SOW may include taking work from incumbents. 40. Hi, With reference to this question “Proven experience of providing support and maintenance as a managed service”Can we clarify whether this is providing product / technical support and maintenance, to a solution we developed with BEIS, on say an annual fixed fee, as opposed to providing ongoing Consultative support, within a contract, resulting from this bid?Thanks BEIS will hand over the work to the supplier. The supplier will manage all aspects of the tasks e.g. bug fixes, enhancements and maintenance for a fixed cost. 41. Morning, we have a question around this question “Proven experience of providing support and maintenance as a managed service”Are you looking for an example of where support and maintenance has been “Outsourced” to us and we’ve managed the contract?Thank you. Yes, correct 42. Can you confirm the job titles of the assessment panel please? The evaluation panel will be assembled from BEIS digital employees and a commercial officer. 43. can you confirm who is the current incumbent please? This is a new requirement. However, future SOW may include taking work from incumbents. 44. Regarding “Proven experience in successfully building services using c#, razor, MVC.net core, CSS and JavaScript” Are you looking for a list of projects we’ve built using the above technologies or one detailed example showing “how” we built a specific service using those technologies. BEIS would like to understand the suppliers capability with these technologies. 45. Provisional timetable: Shortlisted suppliers notified to submit written proposal 15/03 Shortlisted suppliers submit written proposal 22/03 Presentations 21/03 -22/03 Anticipated contract award 11/04 Can you please provide an anticipated timeline for this procurement that includes dates for: 1) Shortlisting Notification for Stage 2 2) Submission Deadline for Stage 2 3) Presentation 4) Evaluation period 5) Award Notification 46. Please expand on your procurement process timelines and what will the shortlisted firms need to do in the next phase and when? Provisional timetable: Shortlisted suppliers notified to submit written proposal 15/03 Shortlisted suppliers submit written proposal 22/03 Presentations 21/03 -22/03 Anticipated contract award 11/04 47. Please could you provide the anticipated timeline for the various stages of this procurement? Provisional timetable: Shortlisted suppliers notified to submit written proposal 15/03 Shortlisted suppliers submit written proposal 22/03 Presentations 21/03 -22/03 Anticipated contract award 11/04 48. What is the technology stack being used? The tech stack includes the following, however, this is not an exhaustive list.Gov PaaS AWSAzure .Net CoreC#Node.JSPythonAngularRazorJavaScriptStrapiSpecflowSelenumMySQLAzure DevOpsAzure Data FactoryAzure Data LakeAzure DatabricksAzure SQLAzure CosmosBDAzure Container RegistryGithubDocker 49. Can you please share the end to end tech stack. Including languages, frameworks, testing, tools and hosting currently being used? The tech stack includes the following, however, this is not an exhaustive list.Gov PaaS AWSAzure .Net CoreC#Node.JSPythonAngularRazorJavaScriptStrapiSpecflowSelenumMySQLAzure DevOpsAzure Data FactoryAzure Data LakeAzure DatabricksAzure SQLAzure CosmosBDAzure Container RegistryGithubDocker 50. Can you please clarify whether your team has an existing pipeline of projects / services that the successful supplier is likely to support and, if so, can you please share a sample of this pipeline? The BEIS Digital pipeline of work is still being defined. Work packages will be issued on SOW basis.