ADMINISTRATIVE REPORT

Date: September 6, 2002
Author/Local: J. Lloyd/7254

RTS No. 02962

CC File No. 1805/1151

Council: October 1, 2002

TO:	Vancouver City Council
FROM:	General Manager of Community Services Manager of Materials Management
SUBJECT:	Award of Request for Proposal No. PS02039 ViewStar System Enhancement Services

RECOMMENDATION

THAT Council accept the proposal from Precision Business Technologies, Inc. to provide consulting service to assist the City with the enhancement of the Community Service's ViewStar system at an estimated cost of $286,000US (plus the Goods and Services Tax less the anticipated receipt of the municipal rebate) subject to a contract satisfactory to the Director of Legal Services.

COUNCIL POLICY

The policy of Council is to award contracts for the purchase of equipment, supplies and services that will give the highest value based on quality, service and price.

Contracts with a value over $300,000 are referred to Council.

BACKGROUND

DOMINO is one of the key Community Services business systems and stores documents relating to application, processing, inspection, and control of development in the City. The DOMINO system using a software product called ViewStar was implemented in mid-1996. The System works by capturing `address related' documents in Community Services for the approximately 130,000 civic addresses in Vancouver and now contains in excess of one million document images. Approximately 153,000 documents are added each year. Thesedocuments include permits and internal and external correspondence related to approvals, permit processing, inquiries, and bylaw violations. Paper documents that arrive in the Community Services' Data Resource Centre are fed through an electronic scanner that creates digital images of what is on the paper. The digital images are stored on optical disks and are indexed so that they can easily be retrieved for viewing from workstations located throughout Community Services as well as several workstations located in Engineering and Legal Services.

On November 1, 2001, Council approved financing of the third phase of DOMINO with a loan of $1,000,000 in capital funds to implement a number of enhancements including:

· an upgrade to new server hardware;

· a software upgrade to the current release;

· development and establishment of a Records Classification System in DOMINO that will be closely aligned with the classification system planned by Corporate Records;

· capture of paper documents that are currently not stored into the DOMINO system such as:
- Planning block files
- Photographs
- Subdivision files
- Subject related files
- Project files
- Development Permit Files
- Rezoning Files;

· allowing faxed documents to be stored directly in DOMINO;

· making DOMINO documents accessible via the Intranet / Internet;

· perform a technical upgrade for the `jukebox'.

Approximately $500,000 of the approved funding was allocated for consulting services to be performed by a qualified ViewStar implementor. A Request for Proposal was issued in order to select a contractor to perform the enhancements.

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL (RFP) AND EVALUATION PROCESS

The following two proponents responded to the RFP for this project:

	Estimated Cost
Precision Business Technologies	$286,000 USD
Enterprise Consulting Partners	$334,581 USD

The Goods and Services Tax (less the anticipated receipt of the municipal rebate) is in addition to all prices shown in this report.

The prices shown above from both proponents include estimated travel expenses which would be incurred by the proponents, but which would be charged back to the City. Precision's proposal included twenty-five trips at an estimated total cost of $30,000US and Enterprise included fourteen trips at an estimated total cost of $18,010US.

An evaluation team made up of staff from the Community Services Group and City Clerk's Office assessed the proposals against the following criteria:
· understanding of the project requirements;
· quality and experience of the firm and proposed consulting resources;
· technical solutions;
· price.

In the view of the evaluation team, the proposal of Precision Business Technologies provides best value to the City and the company is capable of successfully completing this project.

Therefore, it is recommended that the contract for the enhancement of the ViewStar system be awarded to Precision Business Technologies Inc.
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

The total estimated cost of this contract is $286,000 USD and will be funded through a loan from the Capital Financing Fund, to be repaid from existing loan repayment budgets. The estimates are consistent with the DOMINO - Third Phase report approved by Council on November 1, 2001.

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(c) 1998 City of Vancouver