October 26, 2018 RP022-18 ITS Professional Staffing Resources on an Annual Contract ADDENDUM #1 Please see the below summation of the questions and answers that have been received regarding the above solicitation. 1. Once the contract is awarded, will all awarded vendors receive job descriptions at the same time? Correct, job descriptions would be sent out to all awarded vendors that indicated ability to fill the type of position being sought at that time. 2. Will awarded vendors have relationships with hiring managers at the County or does communication go through GC DOITS administrative staff only? Communications will primarily be handled through GC DOITS administrative staff. A hiring manager with the County may choose to contact an awarded vendor directly about a potential candidate or a candidate currently on the job with the County. 3. What was the volume of job descriptions from the previous year? The volume of added/new job descriptions will vary according to business needs and therefore this is not a number that has been recorded. 4. What was the annual spend for the ITS Professional Staffing Resource contract from the past several years or can the County report what the spend has been thus far on the current contract, RP021-13? As stated in section 1.1 of the RFP, For the contract period April 1, 2017 through March 31, 2018, DOITS contracted with 21 service providers for approximately $4 million. The actual expenditure of prior years varied slightly based upon business needs for each year. 5. In Appendix D, Cost Proposal Section 5, the County has asked for an Hourly Salary Range Minimum/Maximum. Is the County looking for the hourly pay rate, the salary, or the bill rate the awarded vendor will charge for the skill sets listed? This is intended to be the bill rate range (Minimum/Maximum) Gwinnett County would be billed by the awarded vendor for each skill set. 6. Are resources for this contract already budgeted by the County for 2019? If so, how many resources in total does the County feel it may need? Funding for 2019 has been requested. The number of resources needed varies based on the business needs of the County. The County currently has 27 IT contractors available to it within the DOITS.
7. On pages 9 and 10 of the RFP, the county lists out a number of Position Descriptions organized by categories of positions (e.g., Infrastructure, Applications, SAP, etc.). Is it the county s intent to award contracts for vendors that can satisfy as many of the category/sub-categories as possible? Or will the County award contracts for firms at a category level? As an example, in reviewing the Position Descriptions since our firm is more of an IT Consultancy we would only qualify in categories 3.7.1 and 3.7.2. We would not want to spend time in preparing a proposal response if the County is only entertaining proposals from firms that can provide positions in a broad variety categories. At the top of page 8, the RFP states: Step 3: One or more service providers will be selected for each section in Appendix A (i.e., Infrastructure, Database, etc.) based on their overall average score from Section 2.7. The County anticipates selecting multiple service providers to be awarded the contract. The County anticipates selecting multiple vendors for each section listed on pages 9 and 10: 3.1 Infrastructure, 3.2 Database Administration, 3.3 Development, 3.4 GIS, 3.5 SAP, 3.6 Web Development, 3.7 Strategic Services, and 3.8 Security. 8. Page 1 of the RFP states to send 4 copies and page 6 states to send 5. Please advise. Please submit original, four copies and one electronic version of your proposal. 9. How many copies of the cost proposal should be submitted? Only one copy of the cost proposal should be submitted. 10. Page 1 lists items to be returned and shows the Contractor Affidavit & Agreement (E-verify) to be on page 66. It does not appear to be there. The Contractor Affidavit and Agreement (E-verify) should have actually been on page 68 but the page is blank. Please see the form attached to this Addendum. 11. May the proposing vendor provide the PDF copy of their proposal on a flash drive as opposed to a CD-ROM? Yes, a flash drive is acceptable for the electronic submission. 12. Is this solicitation for a new contract? If no, please provide a list of incumbent vendor(s). Yes, this is a new contract to be awarded and begin when the current contract expires next March. All vendors providing services to the County on the current contract would have to propose and be awarded for the engagement to provide services after March of 2019. 13. Is there an alternative to written letter for the references? In our experience, the majority of public sector employees are not allowed to provide written references. The County is not requiring written letters of references for this solicitation. References are provided in the format found on page 12 of the solicitation document. The County will reach out to the contacts provided there to obtain the reference. As stated on page 12, the vendor may attach a letter of if they desire to do so. 14. What is the tentative date to award this contract? The tentative date to award will be April 1, 2019. 15. How many copies of the cost proposal should be submitted? Only (1) one copy of the cost proposal should be submitted. This should be sealed in a separate envelope. 16. Some of the insurance requirements for this proposal do not seem applicable to the contract, could these be stricken? Any exceptions the vendor wishes to take should be noted in their proposal response and will either be approved or denied by the County at the time of award. 17. Please confirm the vendor may re-create Appendix B Service Provider Questionnaire in a Word template so we have room to answer. Confirmed. The County does not supply a word format. 18. Are there any font/format requirements or restrictions for the proposal? Or page limits for each section? No restrictions on font or format and no page limits for each section.
19. How will the county score the cost proposal? The County has a standard formula used to score the cost proposal. The basic premise of this formula is the highest number of points is provided to the lowest cost proposal. Numbers for the remaining cost proposals are awarded based on the percent difference between the lowest cost proposal and the next and so on down the line. This formula will be used and a score provided for each cost proposal that is opened for the short list of vendor. 20. Please provide a list of vendors for the current contract for ITS Professional Staffing. How long has these vendors served the County. Please see the list below of contractors on the current contract which expires on March 31, 2019. At its expiration this contract will have been in place for (5) five years: Accretive Technologies Apex Systems Ardent Technologies, Inc. ARK Solutions Avertra Corporation Butler America, LLC (formerly ASK Staffing) CCCi Ciber Global Dickinson EPI-USE Equal-Plus Matlen Silver Group, Inc Matrix Resources Inc. Novalink Solutions Phoenix Business Revolution Tech Strategic Staffing Sunplus Data Group Synergy America The Royak Group 21. Does a proposer need to submit a Certificate of Insurance with their proposal submission? A Certificate of Insurance may be provided with the proposal but is not required. These are typically asked for once award decision has been made prior to actual award date taking place so that information can be confirmed and vetted and work may progress beginning first day of award. 22. When does the County anticipate completing its evaluation and notifying respondents? The County wishes to begin use of this contract on April 1, 2019. The Board of Commissioners must approve this contact s award. Proposers will be notified the day following the approval of the Board of Commissioners whenever that may fall. This date would hopefully arrive prior to April 1, 2019. 23. Will respondents be disqualified or adversely impacted during the evaluation process if they were to submit exceptions to the County? There are no scoring subtractions assigned to the proposal scoring for exceptions requested by the vendor. Exceptions are each dealt with and approved or denied during the process before award. 24. How many vendors does the County plan to award? No specific number of awards has been identified. It is the intention of Gwinnett County to award contracts to multiple vendors in order to meet the personnel needs of the various areas. 25. Is the County currently utilizing all firms that were awarded on the present contract, RP021-13; ITS Professional Staffing? The County has not utilized services from all the contracted vendors on the current contract.
26. Page 2 of the RFP reads that $4 million was spent on 27 contractors. Is this for IT only? Yes 27. What is the most in-demand skill set the County is looking for? There is not any particular skill set more in demand by the County than another. Openings are filled by the ITS Professional Staffing Contract according to the business needs of the County at the time 28. Will the consultants fulfilling this contract work a 7 hour or 8 hour schedule at the County? 8 hours 29. The RFP states that the contract length varies. What is the average contract length? It varies by the department for which they were brought aboard. There is no data available regarding the average length of time. 30. What is the range of positions that will be filled this contract? The range of positions currently being solicited is listed in Appendix A of the solicitation. Positions may be added or deleted throughout the contract term. 31. A statement was made at the pre-proposal conference that the County currently has 27 Contractors. What is the average quarterly number of Contractors? How many vacancies has the County had in 2018? There are 20 awarded vendors on the ITS Professional Staffing Contract. Coming from these 20 vendors the County currently has 27 temporary personnel working. The information regarding average quarterly numbers is not tracked and therefore not available. The number of vacancies has not been tracked. 32. What was the previous RFP number that is expiring? RP021-13 33. Regarding interviews, is the County willing to conduct video conferences if the contractor is not local? This decision would be made at the discretion of the hiring manager at the time of filling the need. 34. Are vendors required to provide a dedicated account manager and have an office in Atlanta? It would be helpful to have a local office however it is not a requirement. 35. As there will most likely be multiple vendors awarded, how will the County assign work? When a need is identified a job description will be created and be sent out to all vendors on the contract that stated/quoted in the proposal that they cover that skills set. Then the County will accept resumes and the hiring manager will review these and schedule interviews for qualified candidates. 36. Has the County had any issues with not being able to fill a position? No 37. During the evaluation process, what are the criteria for scoring? The scoring criteria are listed on Pages 7 and 8 of the solicitation. An evaluation team of County employees will rate each proposal submission on these criteria. 38. In the Security Section, are background checks performed by the County or by the vendor? By the County. 39. Regarding background checks, does the county have a 7 year criminal check and a financial check? The type of background check performed by the County will be determined by the position to be filled. 40. Is the County currently using a MSP or VMS system to distribute the positions? No, email is the current method of distribution. 41. Does the county limit each vendor at to the number of resumes they may submit for a requested position? No, not at this time.
42. Are resumes vendor neutral or do you know which vendor submitted which resume? The hiring manager does know which vendor submitted specific resumes since these are provided by email. However our main focus is to select the right skill set for the requested position. 43. What is the County s procedure if a contractor supplied by one of the awarded vendors is terminated? Does every vendor have an opportunity to replace them? Yes, the process starts over from the beginning 44. Are any of the positions hired to work remotely? Typically that is not the case, but that would be up to the hiring manager and the Director of the IT Department. 45. Has the budget been approved for all of the positions? The budget requests are submitted to the Budget Committee and approved by the Board of Commissioners in early January. 46. If a vendor begins to offer positions after the award that were not quoted initially, is there a process to receive job requests? No new positions will be added to a vendors list of available positions after the award of this contract due to the fact that pricing at that point would be a problem since the positions would not have been initially quoted. 47. What is the fiscal year for the County? Calendar year 48. Are job requests sent out to all vendors or only to those vendors who stated in their proposal that they can provide certain positions? The requests will only go to the vendors who stated in the proposal that they could provide those contractors since the County is bound by the rates quoted. 49. Is there a minimum duration of a placement? When a request is sent out, does it specify the duration of the position? There is no minimum duration of a placement. Positions requests sent out do specify the probably duration of the position. 50. Is this an on-demand basis contract being solicited? Yes 51. When a request is sent out, is there a set bill rate? Vendors are held to the rates they submitted in the proposal. 52. When a request is sent out, is there a deadline to fill the position and are vendors notified when the position is filled? There is no set deadline for filling a position, but the County hopes to fill it as quickly as possible. All responses are expected within 5 days. 53. How does the County handle multiple submissions of the same contractor by more than one vendor? This would go to the vendor who first submitted. Is there a dispute process for this? No 54. In a situation where the County fills a position, and 6 months later needs an additional contractor are new candidates requested? Or does the County review resumes from the first submission? The County will start the process over again from the beginning. The original resumes would not have been stored for this purpose. 55. Do you call vendors instead of email? Calls may occasionally be placed to vendors for questions, however, most communications are handled via email especially those having to do with trying to fill a position. 56. Is the County open to vendor site visits? Not sure for what circumstance this question is being asked. Always best to have express invitation of a County employee before showing up on premises.
57. Is there a process to add or remove skill sets? The County is able to add or remove skill sets throughout the term of the contract and the new positions are sent to all of the approved vendors. 58. Are all of the positions contract only or are they ever converted to full-time employees? Not typically. Thank you Terri Shirley Purchasing Associate II This addendum should be signed in the space provided below and returned with your proposal. Failure to do so may result in your proposal being deemed non-responsive. Authorized Representative Company Name
RP022-18; ITS Professional Staffing Resource on an Annual Contract CONTRACTOR AFFIDAVIT AND AGREEMENT (THIS FORM SHOULD BE FULLY COMPLETED AND RETURNED WITH YOUR SUBMITTAL) By executing this affidavit, the undersigned contractor verifies its compliance with The Illegal Reform Enhancements for 2013, stating affirmatively that the individual, firm, or corporation which is contracting with the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners has registered with and is participating in a federal work authorization program* [any of the electronic verification of work authorization programs operated by the United States Department of Homeland Security or any equivalent federal work authorization program operated by the United States Department of Homeland Security to verify information of newly hired employees, pursuant to the Immigration Reform and Control Act, in accordance with the applicability provisions and deadlines established therein. The undersigned further agrees that, should it employ or contract with any subcontractor(s) in connection with the physical performance of services or the performance of labor pursuant to this contract with the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners, contractor will secure from such subcontractor(s) similar verification of compliance with the Illegal Immigration Reform and Enforcement Act on the Subcontractor Affidavit provided in Rule 300-10-01-.08 or a substantially similar form. Contractor further agrees to maintain records of such compliance and provide a copy of each such verification to the Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners at the time the subcontractor(s) is retained to perform such service. E-Verify * User Identification Number Date Registered Legal Company Name Street Address City/State/Zip Code BY: Authorized Officer or Agent Date (Contractor Signature) _ Title of Authorized Officer or Agent of Contractor Printed Name of Authorized Officer or Agent SUBSCRIBED AND SWORN BEFORE ME ON THIS THE DAY OF, 201 For Gwinnett County Use Only: Document ID # Issue Date: Initials: Notary Public My Commission Expires: * As of the effective date of O.C.G.A. 13-10-91, the applicable federal work authorization program is E-Verify operated by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Bureau of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in conjunction with the Social Security Administration (SSA). Rev. 6.20.13