Part Two: Request for Proposals (RFP)

For: the supply of computer software and equipment

RFP ID # 245652225/ December 15, 2016

Submission deadline: /December 15, 2016/17:25Hrs

Bidders Meeting Wednesday/26

Deadline for final submission of questions: Thursday/ 30/ 17:30Hrs

Introduction 

Purpose

Booming for Waters, Inc seeks to outsource the services of a software developer by contacting a provider (from now on referred to as a “Vendor”). The company must have the capacity to sufficiently supply the firm (from now on referred to as a “Contractor”) with various technologies as indicated in RFP. The services to be provided must be performed with on work order basis. Booming for Waters, Inc expects that full-time employees across each of the skill set needed, and two full-time employees will perform the works during the implementation period. The Vendor must designate more than one available resource for all the development process, which will begin no later than April 1, 2017. Also, the Vendor must have the capacity to respond to all the requests and further include more staff for 30 days. The period of for the performance of all the tasks indicated is through April 30, 2017, while the after service may be extended for two years from the period indicated.

Background 

Booming for Waters, Inc is a software development company formed by some consortium businesses in India. Since 2002, the firm’s primary goals and objective includes identifying and other enterprises and government to deal with all the software problems and managing information issues in all the regions of the country of the country and other agencies in foreign countries. Most of the consumers are those confronted with the problem of exchanging the information with their user and other subsidiaries in other nations and regions. The company is led by the board of directors with representatives all regions appointed by the local board for national representation. Membership Group comprises one director appointed from the areas where it has a branch and headed by one national Chair with some deputies. An official at the local members is responsible for decision making regarding all the operations, policymaking about management of research in all its facilities. For any additional information regarding our company and its activities, please visit our website available at http://www.boomwaterinc.org.

Samples of request for proposals

Description of Tasks to be performed 

Booming for Waters, Inc is formulating various software applications, which call for specialized skills as indicated in the section below in this RFP. All the software developers will be responsible for all part of the development and the implementation phase such as programming, designing, training, testing, and configuration of all the derivatives as well as the after service required. The firm offering the contracting services by utilizing agile development techniques should provide to design requirements. Developers, on the other hand, must ensure the application of the industry best practices for the implementation and management of the project. As such, the contractors and subcontracted companies will perform the entire specified task as explained with complete within the agreed time. 

Skillsets and Experience 

The following are general Skillsets required of all employees

Experience and understanding of the working of agile software and the development processes with rapid iteration cycles 51 (1–2 weeks) 

The contractors and the employees must have the experience to meet the strict deadline in the formulation and implementation of effective agile software development. These includes activities such as testing with mock objects 

Continuous use of integration equipment like Hudson, Jenkins, and Refactoring

Familiarity with development and object-oriented design such as use of interfaces and useful design patterns

Experience with Java, Eclipse, Subversion, Maven, and others

General Java development such as using JDBC, WebFlow, MVC, XML Schema, XPath, XQuery, and XSLT* 

Java security handling and model X509 trust stores, certificates, and others

Enterprise integration 

Development of Java web services 

Implementation of Java Web services using JAX-WS or Apache CXF and other toolkits below 

Enterprise integration patterns and Apache Camel

OSGi and Apache ServiceMix*

WSS4J 83*

WS-Security, WS-ReliableMessaging and WS-Addressing WS-Trust*

SAML and WS-Security* 

All skills listed above are General Skillsets; some are necessary expertise and those denoted by *are highly desired for the tasks requirements.

Experience Levels for Each Skillset 

The employees to be proposed by the firm for the superior skills must be divided into two distinct categories, which include junior and senior levels. The junior position must meet a qualification of 1–5 years and above. On the other hand, the senior-level workers need to have more than five years of experience over. One candidate can be proposed for both levels indicated above. However, the vendor should clarify the position the personnel is recommended for the consideration to be made. Further, the necessary and general qualifications mentioned must be met for the candidate to be considered. Besides, the vendor company must also indicate the hourly remuneration benefits rate for each of the proposed candidate. The hourly payment rate submitted is inclusive of other expenses. 

All the costs proposed by the vendor for the positions should align with the payment benefits as indicated in the table below.

Hourly Rate	Junior Level	Senior Level
Java Development	Amount  per hour	Amount  per hour
Provision of Java Web Services and Development of other specification	Amount  per hour	Amount  per hour

Schedule 

The proposed task will be delivered on a tight schedule, which is defined in this RFP in the table below. The timeline for each delivery milestone is as defined in Pacific Standard Time unless indicated otherwise in writing or any other formal communication. The submitted schedule is subject to alteration by Booming for Waters, Inc at any time.

MILESTONE	Timeline
Booming for Waters, Inc issues RFP	November 12, 2016
Vendors requested to submit questions to Booming for Waters, Inc	December 9, 2016
Booming for Waters, Inc posts responses to questions	December 23, 2016
Proposal to Booming for Waters, Inc posts responses to questions	January 9, 2016
Booming for Waters, Inc designates successful Vendors	February 1, 2016

Requirements

Requirement for the Vendor Profile 

The vendor must be a Legal business name register with the laws of the country. 

It must be either a corporation, sole proprietorship or a partnership 

Year of organization and registration  

Address, voice address, Internet Website and other necessary contacts

Organizational structure indicating the names of the managers in charge of the organization 

Also, there should be an indication of the title, name, full contact information

Distribution of RFP

In the distribution of the request for proposal, it is paramount to design a distribution strategy and consult all the stakeholders such as the communication and media department to have their input of the best avenues and mode of delivery. An excellent distribution strategy by the team is likely to receive the RFP and makes the process more competitive in achieving the required goals and objectives. Some of the factors to consider are; the distribution requirements, the firm’s physical location, the kind of company and the services sought, the size of the enterprise and the money involved in the contract. The factors and requirement stated are very central because they determine the distribution requirements and the techniques of distribution such as an advertisement.

Examples of request for proposals

Part Three: Timeline of Tasks and Activities

Tasks and activities	Personnel responsible	Timeline
The first thing is contract signing which ushers the implementation process, and various cadres of workers are assigned to deal with the matter.	Project manager	1 week
Completing the questionnaires is done to help the firm understand the set of requirements when completing the project and also understand other details.	Junior Field workers and junior managers	2 weeks
Needs Assessment is the process that entails perusing the filled questionnaires and preparing the client profile and summary of the implementation.	Managers	3 days
Specification Meetings  entails meeting again with the client either in the conference hall to facilitate discussion of the more details regarding the specification needs and answer more questions on the requested details	Senior workers	7-10 days
Finalization of the schedule includes setting a working schedule and preparation of the whole process.	Junior and Senior workers	4-6 days
Data conversion by utilizing the initial data enables the employees and the management to analyze the collected data sets and respond to the requests. During this period, the firm works with the client as needed to help in identifying and resolve any emerging issues	Junior and Senior workers under the management supervision	3-4 weeks
Data Conversion process enables the firm requiring the services to provide the data set and the contractor to perform the conversion process such as loading the data.	Junior and Senior workers under the management supervision	3-4 weeks
Software Installation is the stage that allows for the hosted installations to be performed. In this stage, the installation details are handled together with the IT department of the beneficiary of the services. The process can be handled on the site or remotely.	Senior workers under the management supervision	1.5-2 weeks
On-Site Training activities are the phase of the training program, which is tailored toward the vendor unique needs. This allows for the developer to provide standard training packages based on the software needs.	Senior workers and managers	2 weeks

References

Greer, M. J., Rosen, D. W., & Schaefer, D. (2013). Cloud manufacturing: Strategic vision and state-of-the-art. Journal of Manufacturing Systems, 32(4), 564-579.

Paech, B., Heinrich, R., Zorn-Pauli, G., Jung, A., & Tadjiky, S. (2012,). Answering a request for proposal–challenges and proposed solutions. In International Working Conference on Requirements Engineering: Foundation for Software Quality (pp. 16-29). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.

Spencer, J. S. (2002). U.S. Patent No. 6,356,909. Washington, DC: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Vyatkin, V. (2013). Software engineering in industrial automation: a State-of-the-art review. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, 9(3), 1234-1249.