Standard RFP Template

Submitted by James Kemp, PMP

http://cpmg.home.att.net/

· Project objective. Example: To construct and implement a new transit management center and statewide radio infrastructure, and to deploy an expandable, maintainable, automated system for planning, managing, and controlling bus, paratransit, ferry, and passenger information operations and maintenance throughout the (agency) service area on ___ buses, ___ paratransit vehicles, ___ passenger ferries, and ___ nonrevenue vehicles operated out of ___ vehicle base facilities…

· Project scope. Example: The contractor shall provide all tools, equipment, materials, software, and services required to achieve the project objective, per these specifications, with the exception of …, which will be provided by (agency) or others, together with five years of comprehensive unlimited warranty support for installed hardware and five years of software maintenance support.

· Business requirements* (final acceptance criteria) with separate specifications for as many distinct operational environments as may exist. Examples:

§ The system shall allow authorized personnel to… (do whatever, in whatever situations, with whatever levels of effort, accuracy, and performance that the agency requires);

§ The system shall provide to passengers with telephone access at any and all bus stops following information: “next bus to ______ will arrive in ___ minutes” accurate to within: a) 5 minutes in greater than 99 percent of all cases, and b) 3 minutes in greater than 95 percent of all cases;

§ The system shall provide a means for vehicle operators to initiate communications with the control center with a single action;

§ The system shall allow authorized users to view and report response times and lost call rates for all communications;

§ The system shall allow control center personnel to respond to priority requests to talk within 15 seconds of the operator’s initiation of the request in greater than 99.98 percent of all cases;

§ The system shall automatically report failure of any system component within 12 hours of failure occurrence;

§ The system shall continue to provide required functional performance during periods of power failure, single equipment failure…;

§ … and many more, as required.

* Note that business requirements are not complete without a description of how conformance will be verified (i.e. how they will be tested)

· Additional desired features/characteristics with anticipated annual value to the agency for each. Note: Stating the anticipated value of each additional desired feature up front helps prevent casual items from driving up project cost, allows vendors to develop more responsive proposals, and sets the stage for collaborative value engineering prior to issuance of the final amended RFP to short-listed firms.

· Concept of operations (i.e., use-case scenarios, expected sequence of events, and degree of manual intervention required to carry out a given operation.)
Example: Load a new schedule, locate a vehicle, degree of automation, etc.

· Nonfunctional requirements. Example: Scalability, overall system reliability, multi-vendor component availability, life cycle support for hardware and software maintenance, mean time between component failures, mean time to repair, etc.

· Design Constraints. Example: preferred operating system, preferred database management system, preferred communications provider, required third-party tools, user interface specifications, required modularity, architectural interfaces, interface standards, profiles, etc., with the anticipated annual value to be gained through each.

· Training and Documentation requirements. Note: The documentation should be tested for accuracy and completeness just as rigorously as the system itself.

· Acceptance test scenarios for system and associated documentation, identifying any special cases and boundary conditions that may be important to the agency. Example: Provide scenarios that the agency staff may consider to be difficult for a vendor’s system to handle properly, either in general or in their specific operating environment. System performance should be tested against each and every affected business requirement for each relevant test scenario.

· Service Delivery Specification. Example: Specify payment milestones, project administration and reporting requirements, schedule of penalties, required maintenance response times, etc., as well as requirements for project management plans, design reviews, installation plans, etc. that are to be proposed by the vendor and finalized prior to contract award.

· Appendices (not part of the specification per se, but necessary to support the procurement process).

Examples:

· Proposal requirements;

· Proposal evaluation criteria;

· Background; and supporting information;

· Engineer’s estimate.