Basic Information

Reference Number

0000153837

Issuing Organization

Municipality of Central Huron

Owner Organization

Municipality of Central Huron

Solicitation Type

RFP - Request for Proposal (Formal)

Solicitation Number

Central_Huron1

Title

Municipal Website

Source ID

PU.MU.ON.812223.C104340

Details

Location

Canada, Ontario

Delivery Point

23 Albert Street
Clinton, Ontario
Canada N0M 1L0

Purchase Type

One Time Only- Delivery Date:2019/12/14

DescriptionA - Latest Amendment

Responsive-Design Website

The Corporation of
The Municipality of Central Huron

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS FOR A RESPONSIVE-DESIGN WEBSITE

CLOSING INFORMATION
Q&A SESSION:    July 8, 2013 at 10:30 a.m.
SUBMISSION:    July 24, 2013 by 12:00 p.m.
ADDRESSEE:    Jeff Boyes, Deputy Treasurer
Municipality of Central Huron
23 Albert Street
Clinton ON   N0M 1L0

mail: jboyes@centralhuron.com

phone: 519-482-3997 ext. 1244

Introduction

1. Municipality of Central Huron

The Municipality of Central Huron, located along Ontario’s West Coast in the heart of Huron County is comprised of the former Town of Clinton and Townships of Goderich and Hullett. Central Huron has a population of approximately 7,500 residents, and is one of nine lower-tier municipalities in Huron County.

1. Central Huron’s website goals

Central Huron’s website is intended to provide an Internet-accessible repository for all public-domain information that Central Huron maintains. It is also intended to provide information aimed at attracting new residents and businesses.

The current website http://www.centralhuron.com/ was redesigned in 2010 and is maintained using our previous web developer’s proprietary content management system (Quipp CMS). The website has served its initial purposes, but is not adequate to meet objectives that have evolved in recent years.

1. RFP for new website

Central Huon is hereby requesting proposals for a new website that will enable staff to provide additional web-based information and applications to the public. The services to be obtained via this RFP are expected to include analysis, information-architecture and content-style design, implementation (including conversion of content from the current website), staff training, and as-needed ongoing technical support for problem resolution, software updating, and assistance with the integration of future applications.

Preference will be given to applicants that are located sufficiently close to Central Huron so as to permit regular on-site meetings throughout the process.

Acceptance, Revocation and Rejection of Submission/Quotation: The Municipality of Central Huron reserves the right to accept or reject any or all quotations, and the right to negotiate the scope of work with any Contractor that submits a quote. Lowest price will not necessarily be accepted. The Municipality of Central Huron reserves the right to award the job to the Municipality’s best advantage.

Functional requirements

1. Immediate objectives

The new website must provide all of the information from the current website. The majority of the content will be text. There will be minimal use of image-content files (JPEG, PNG, etc). Some of the optionally-downloadable content will include objects such as Excel spreadsheets, Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, and PDF files. In addition to providing all the information on the website, the immediate objectives will also include the following functionality:

Integration with iCompass' CivicWeb Portal;
A calendar of events, including announcements of Council meetings, committee meetings, special meetings, important dates and deadlines, community events, and a mechanism by which Central Huron residents can submit requests for the posting of additional items.
An RSS feed, including items such as the above, notices of the addition of new website materials, etc.
A business directory. The directory should be sortable by category. The Municipality is interested in exploring innovative ways to manage this information that maximizes the accuracy and timeliness of the information with little maintenance from staff.
A mailing-list subscription management system with the ability to collect subscriber information and email addresses, send newsletters and notices, etc.
A system for registering and managing consent for sending of tax and utility bills electronically. This system will be only for the purpose of gathering contact information and consent. Another system will be responsible for sending the actual bill.

1. Future objectives

There is no specific commitment to or anticipated timetable for implementation of any of the below future objectives. The new website must accommodate the implementation of those we may choose to pursue.
Outreach:

Online surveys and opinion polls.

Transaction:

Registration for events and services.
Completion and submission of online forms (eg: for building permits, hall rentals, requests for service, job openings, etc).
Electronic payment for fines, licenses, permits, etc.

1. Content Management System

The new website requires an easy-to-use “Content Management System” (CMS) that Central Huron staff will use for creating and updating content. The CMS must also allow for future development. Our preference is a free open-source application (such as “Wordpress”).

1. Stylistic “branding”

The graphic style of the new website must feature the logo and colours of Central Huron.

1. Accessibility

The website must be compliant with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). Furthermore, the website should strive to meet all W3 WCAG 2.1 AA criteria where possible. In the proposal, please provide details regarding any section or feature that does not meet the WCAG 2.1 AA criteria.

1. Content and device independence

The new website must be constructed in compliance with “Responsive Web Design”, “One Web”, “Mobile First” objectives in conformance with World Wide Web Consortium (http://w3.org/) specifications, including HTML5 for structural and semantic markup, CSS3 for styling with Media Queries for progressive enhancement, and best-practices guides (mobile web authoring, device-independent authoring, default delivery context, etc).

Output of the CMS must pass W3C validation (http://validator.w3.org/) for HTML5, CSS3, and MobileOK with no “critical” or “severe” failures. However, moderate violations of MobileOK filesize limitations and diagnostics resulting from the non-essential use of vendor-prefix CSS3 specifications are acceptable.

Output of the CMS must transparently support a wide diversity of end-user hardware and software that will range from no-longer-supported to state-of-the-art desktop computers and laptops running a variety of operating systems (Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc) to an ever-growing array of tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices. All of the content must display with the common user-device browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari) even though some versions of some browsers may not support certain aspects of HTML5 and/or CSS3. All of the content must also be available to special-purpose browsers (plain-text browsers such as Lynx, readers for the visually impaired, etc).

The content must dynamically adjust to whatever screen-size area the user has chosen for the browser window (the “viewport”), and to the small-screen display of a smartphone, without resorting to having separate versions of content for different categories of devices. (For examples, see the “Media Queries” website, http://mediaqueri.es).

The content for which Central Huron is responsible must not use “cookies”, Java, FLASH , “frames”, or “pop-up” windows, and Javascript must not be a requirement for navigating and/or displaying content.

1. Content architecture and layout

The content of the new website must be organized in a logical hierarchy that will enable the user to “drill down” to the required information rapidly. This will require determining the optimum combination of menu choices and depth. It must also maintain Central Huron’s use of links on the home page to Central Huron’s most used or visited pages. The website will not require a search function but would implement an index of services and topics that can be easily accessed by users and easily maintain by staff.

1. Website-hosting service

The Municipality is satisfied with its current website-hosting service provider and sees no reason at this time to seek an alternate to host the new website. However, a mechanism must be available for staff to transfer the entire content of the new website to some other website-hosting service, should the Municipality decide to do that at some future time.

1. Website maintenance

The Municipality’s office staff must be able to maintain all areas of the website through the use of the CMS. This will require the ability to add new material and to delete or change existing material at all levels of the website, including forms, documents, templates, the main page, and the menu and submenu structure and content.

Process

1. Step one -- pre-submission Q&A session

The Municipality will conduct a pre-submission Q&A session at the Municipal offices, limited to not more than two attendees per potential respondent, so that they may ask questions intended to help focus their submission. Participation is optional; it is not a requirement for progressing to the next step.

1. Step two -- initial submission

Municipality requires an initial submission (30 double-sided pages of paper, maximum, plus a PDF of the same).

1.    For each item in "Functional requirements" above, explain how you propose to meet that requirement, how you propose to demonstrate to us that you have done so, and how you propose to rectify any shortcomings that we discover after the new website has “gone live”.

2.    For each separate software product that you are proposing, provide a one-paragraph overview of its major features and include URL pointers to the authoritative-source documents that contain the full functional-description, installation, configuration, and administrator documentation for that product plus any relevant technical overviews, features/benefits summaries, and white papers.

3.    Include your recommendations for a collaborative iterative process by which we will select the “look and feel” stylistic design for the website content and hierarchy.

4.    Itemize the proposed project timetable, in the form of a timeline that explains each step plus the number of weeks anticipated for completion of that step.

5.    Identify the cost of each product and service, including any relevant annual or as-needed support contracts. Identify any applicable warranty terms and conditions. Specify what initial training is included, and what additional-cost training is available. Attach a sample of the contract(s) you would expect us to sign.

6.    Include the name, title, phone number, and email address of the person in your company we will contact for answers to any questions we have as we work through this material.

7.    Identify two or more other organizations (preferably, municipalities of similar size and composition) for which you have developed comparable websites, provide the URLs for those websites, and provide the name, title, phone number, and email address of the person we may contact at each of those organizations as references.

8.    We do not claim that our understanding of our requirements is complete. Please address any other aspects you believe we should consider.

We will develop an initial shortlist of the submissions we deem worthy of further consideration.

We will contact the references identified in these shortlisted submissions, and will contact the respondent for whatever additional information we require.

1. Step three – discussion

We will reduce the initial shortlist to the top few submissions we deem worthy of further consideration, and will invite each of those respondents for a "technical Q&A" session with an audience that will include the project team and may also include some interested members of the community. We will then produce a final shortlist.

1. Step four – analysis

Suitability of the final-shortlist respondents and their proposed products and services will be determined by the project team's assessment of factors including but not necessarily limited to the following.

1.    Features, Accessibility, and ease of use. The extent to which we believe that the proposed products and services will result in the optimum combination of website features plus ease-of-use simplicity for Central Huron staff.

2.    Reputation. The extent to which we believe that other municipalities or similar organizations that have chosen this respondent are delighted with the result and the relationship.

3.    Viability. The extent to which we believe that the respondent is and will continue to be an innovator with the ability of evolving its products and services to meet our future needs.

4.    TCO impact. The extent to which the "total cost of ownership" presents a compelling argument in favour of this respondent. This will include our assessment of the above factors coupled with our assessment of acquisition costs, initial staff training, ease of implementation and transition, on-going development of staff expertise, etc, based on the initial and the additional website applications that we hope to enable over the next several years.

1. Step five -- selection of successful respondent

We will then choose the successful respondent and enter into a contract for the selected products and services.

1. Payment – Payment will be made in equal installments at 4 performance milestones:
Sign off on the scope of work and features to be included.
Approval of the design of the website.
Approval/Preview of working website.
Full website implementation to the satisfaction of the Municipality.

7. Budget
Council has approved a budget of $25,000 for the website redesign. In your proposal, please outline the items to be included in the $25,000. For any recommendations being provided that are in addition to scope of work being covered in the $25,000, we would require an itemized costing.

Dates

Publication

2019/06/24 09:47:52 AM EDT

Bid Intent

Required with response

Bid Intent Deadline

2019/07/23 12:00:00 AM EDT

Question Acceptance Deadline

2019/07/08 10:30:00 AM EDT

Questions are submitted online

Closing Date

2019/07/24 02:00:00 PM EDT

Other

2019/07/08 10:30:00 AM EDT

Contact Information

Jeff Boyes

519-482-3997 ext. 1244

jboyes@centralhuron.com

Pre-Bidding Events

Event Type

Q&A Session

Attendance

Recommended

Event date

2019/07/08 10:30:00 AM EDT

Location

23 Albert Street, Clinton ON N0M 1L0

Event Note

A Q&A session will be held at Central Huron's municipal offices.
See more

Bid Submission Process

Bid Submission Type

Electronic or Physical Bid Submission

Pricing

Lump sum

Bid Documents List

Item Name	Description	Mandatory	Limited to 1 file
Bid Documents	Documents defining the proposal	No	No
No entries

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