REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS DUE BY OCTOBER 12, 2018 The Gratiot County Board of Commissioners ( the County ) invites qualified professional firms to submit proposals for website redesign services. The County intends to enter into an agreement with the chosen firm for a redesign of its website. The County desires an accessible and userfriendly design that serves to welcome users to Gratiot County and its services. To be considered for this engagement, your business must meet the qualifications and satisfy the requirements set forth in this Request for Proposals. Proposals must be received at address listed below by 4:00 pm on Friday, October 12, 2018. Gratiot County Kalin Lombard, Procurement Officer 214 E. Center St. Ithaca, MI 48847 Phone: (989) 875-5264 Fax: (989) 875-5284 E-mail: klombard@gratiotmi.com I. INTRODUCTION The purpose of this Request for Proposals (RFP) is to provide interested and qualified firms and individuals with sufficient information to enable them to prepare and submit proposals for consideration by the Gratiot County Board of Commissioners as part of its procurement of needed professional/technical services. The new website design should serve to allow users to seek out County services as well as discover additional services that Gratiot County provides. The content and structure of the website must be such that it can be easily maintained by existing IT staff, and content updates can be performed by non-it staff. A. Bid Submission and Project Representative. To be considered, two (2) copies of the closed sealed proposal labeled Original Proposal Document must be received by 4:00 pm, October 12, 2018. Requests for information or interpretation of the intent of the RFP and any/all other inquiries must be addressed to the officer listed above. 1
Proposals must be signed by an official authorized to bind the firm to its provisions and the proposal must remain valid for at least one hundred twenty (120) days. All proposals must include a not to exceed fee including all out-of-pocket expenses for this proposal. There is no expressed or implied obligation for Gratiot County to reimburse responding firms for any expenses incurred in preparing proposals in response to this request. B. Right of Refusal Gratiot County reserves the right to reject any or all proposals, to negotiate separately with any source whatsoever in any manner necessary to attend to the best interests of the County, to waive irregularities in any proposal and to accept a proposal which best meets the needs of the County, irrespective of the bid price. C. Project Description. The primary goal of the County is to provide a website that is user friendly and accessible. To accomplish this, the website should guide a user to the department that would best address their needs. An ideal website would allow 24-access to County information, forms and the ability to conduct county business online. Gratiot County s current website is located at www.gratiotmi.com and contains information about the county, its services, and its offerings. Unfortunately, the current design relies on the user to know have a good understanding of the way that the County is structured departmentally in order to find the information they desire. The re-designed website should make it easy for users to search for information or services without drilling through multiple department menus. II. INFORMATION, SPECIFICATIONS AND WEBSITE DEVELOPEMNT REQUIREMENTS A. Scope of Work Proposals for redesign of the County website should address the following objectives, which are not necessarily all-inclusive: 1) The new website shall maintain the www.gratiotmi.com address. 2) The new website should be easy to navigate throughout and shall be accessible from a wide range of devices, including a desktop PC, laptop, tablet, or mobile device of any operating system. 3) The new website must be fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and specifically as it relates to governmental websites. 4) The website shall include a calendar of events that can easily be maintained by IT staff and updated by non-it staff. 5) The website shall include the ability for visitors to send an email, request services, or submit fillable online forms to the appropriate County Department. 6) The website shall include the successful migration of existing content from the current website into the new design. 7) The new website shall include a page for each County Department and do so in a consistent way. 8) The new website shall incorporate or link to various external county systems, including the BS&A Geographic Information System, or a possible future Parks and Recreation 2
reservation system. 9) The new website shall incorporate the ability to imbed audio and video throughout. 10) The new website shall incorporate website analytics to allow for visitor tracking. 11) The new website shall provide for search engine optimization to maintain a high web search ranking across major search providers. 12) The content management system of the new website should be user friendly and easily managed and maintained by both IT staff and non-it staff by supporting multiple security roles, including but not limited to administrator and content creator. 13) The content management system shall have a spell check feature and the ability to preview content prior to publishing. 14) The new website shall have the ability to perform limited content management system changes from a mobile device, for emergency and closure notifications. 15) The new website shall provide for the ability of IT staff to view a log of changes made to the website, the user who performed the change, and when the change was made. 16) The new website shall provide for the ability of IT staff to create new pages that are consistent with the website layout and navigation, along with the ability to delete or disable existing changes. 17) The proposal shall include the procedure to be used for testing and validation of the new website prior to its launch. 18) The proposal shall describe how your firm will provide for initial training of Gratiot County IT staff to ensure the full administration and maintenance of all aspects of the website. 19) The proposal shall include a description of the training materials that will be provided the County for use by IT staff and other content creators. 20) The website must allow for creation of new web forms by IT County staff that are consistent with existing forms. 21) The website must allow for secure payment to be accept with a form. (For example, if a user fills out a permit application and would like to submit payment for a fee required by said application, there must be a secure method of entry for submitting credit card information.) 22) The website must be signed with an SSL certificate, include intrusion detection and security hardening. 23) The website must adhere to modern best practices in the industry. 24) The website should be of a design that can be ported to a new host later if the County chooses to do so. All data relating to the county, whether in existence prior to or compiled in the course of the website redesign, shall be and remain the exclusive property of the County. Upon severability of any contract with the successful firm, or upon request by the County at any time, the successful firm shall promptly deliver such data to the County. 25) The proposal should include an optional companion piece to the website that would allow users to reserve campsites, and would include campsite maps, campsite photos and a secure payment method. This Parks and Recreation reservation page / pages and any cost for implementation shall be listed as optional. B. Specifications of web development company In order to permit a complete evaluation of technical ability, proposals must address each of the following: 1. Qualifications of the web design company. 3
2. Responsible work record, including a list of prior governmental work references. 3. This shall include a listing of Michigan cities or counties of comparable size for which services, as described in this request for proposals, have been performed. Include references from three such entities whom we may directly contact. 4. Compliance with applicable peer review and continuing professional education 5. Understanding of the requirements of the web development 6. Scope of services included in the contract 7. Proposed timetable of events 8. Soundness of technical approach 9. Qualifications of the development team, including identification of staff that would be assigned to Gratiot County and their experience C. Requirements The successful bidder will be required to prepare and provide the following: 1. The selected firm will be required to assume responsibility for all services offered in the proposal whether or not they possess them within their organization. Further, the County will consider the selected business to be the sole point of contact with regard to all contractual matters, including payment of any and all charges resulting from the contract. 2. Time Requirements a. Preliminary discovery, strategy and research should be completed no later than November 15, 2018 b. Wireframes, creative concept, themes, and content review should be completed due no later than January 15, 2019. c. User training and feature testing should be completed no later than February 15, 2019. d. The final website must be live no later than March 15, 2019. D. Fees The proposal must include a not to exceed price to perform the list of requirements 4
itemized. The proposal should also include the total hours estimated to complete the web design, as well as the number of hours and hourly rate for partners, managers, seniors and other staff assigned by classification. E. Contract Award Selection and awarding of the contract will be based upon evaluation by the County of the criteria listed above. The County reserves the right to conduct oral interviews. The contract will be awarded to the business who, based on evaluation of all responses, applying all criteria, is determined to be the best qualified to perform website development. 5