How to Tender for Website or ICT Development

Richard McVeigh

NICVA

27 Sep 2005

free

NICVA Library

This ‘how to guide’ is being written from recent experience of developing and running a tender for website development in the voluntary and community sector however most of the lessons learned should be applicable to ICT tenders in particular and running an invitation to tender in general. It is not how to run a perfect tender but simply some of the lessons and good practice we learned from our own experience.

Creation of the Invitation to Tender (ITT)

For NICVA the process started with a business case; the development of an e-commerce portal website for the community and voluntary sector in Northern Ireland. The aim of the portal was to increase use of ICT and the web, offering services and benefits to the sector not previously available and improving the way NICVA works as an organisation. The portal launched in April 2005 at www.communityni.org.

NICVA’s project team carried out research both within the organisation and within the sector in addition to using previous experience to draw up a comprehensive ‘Invitation to Tender’ document (ITT). We would feel it is well worth the time at this stage putting the effort into developing a good ITT and knowing both your business need and your broad requirements, approach, and associated risks for the project. We also documented how we felt the tendering process would work including time estimates.

The ITT document which was generally well received by interested companies. The document contained the following headings:

1. Background to the project and NICVA
   A description of the business case or project aims and a background to NICVA.
   
2. Supplier response required
   Containing a summary of the project scope, timeline for development and requirements for bidding as well as success criteria.
   
3. Timetable and process of choosing a supplier
   Contained the deadline for questions and submissions as well as a description of how the project would go from there and short-listing timescale.
   
4. Requirements
   Contained the detail of what we were requesting laying out the specific requirements with a general overview of each, a more specific bullet point requirements list and any examples or references we felt provided best practice in the specific area.
   
5. Appendices
   Some technical documents, our questionnaire and suggested layout and workflow for the site.

Publicly Advertised
The ITT was publicly advertised in the Belfast Telegraph (cost of around £1000 for the advert) and was picked up on through the paper by several subscription based tender listing sites/magazines and European journals. We found that for around a week to two weeks afterwards we would receive calls from interested companies. The ITT was sent out by email to companies that requested a copy. Around 40 companies requested a copy.

Information Session
For the next stage of the tendering process NICVA’s ICT team hosted an information session for interested companies. This was a short hour long session aimed at providing some further information on the tender in addition to providing a behind the scenes look at current NICVA sites. It also gave companies present an opportunity to ask questions. Twenty-four companies attended the information session.

We felt the session was useful in that it gave companies who perhaps didn’t have the necessary skills or time to set aside an opportunity to realise this and therefore not spend their valuable time on responding to the ITT. Added to this, developers who planned to respond gained a head start and greater knowledge of the project, which led to better proposals.

Following the information session there was a short period when firms could send in further questions on the tender to NICVA. We responded to these questions by compiling them, answering them and sending out the list of compiled questions and answers to the mailing list of companies that had requested the ITT, trying to keep the whole process as open as we could.

By the deadline for completed proposals to be returned to NICVA we had received fourteen proposals which was a good return and they were generally of a high standard and quality.

Short-listing

Proposals on average were well presented and for our project were anywhere from 10 to over 100 pages long with an average of around 60-70. In the ITT we had laid out the format we would like their responses to follow and generally this was adhered to. It certainly makes going through each response easier. We also included a mandatory questionnaire to draw out some further information from each interested bidder.

Each proposal was studied in detail and a summary drawn up. A study was performed on the companies list of previous work for relevancy and competency and each was ranked. All the short-listed proposals were of a good high standard. Another aid in short-listing was drawing up a decision matrix to compare the bids.

As can be expected there was quite a range in the bid costs for the project but most came in around our budget. A note of caution, most companies quote excluding VAT and from some of the proposals this was not immediately clear.

Interviewing Short-listed Companies and Final Selection

A team from NICVA visited with each of the short-listed companies in order to have an informal chat and a chance to get to know them as well as ask some further questions and get a behind the scenes look at the their products and potential solutions.

This gave NICVA a good chance to get to discuss proposals and to get to know the companies better and to estimate if they would be a good fit.

Conclusions

1. Time was well spent on the team putting the effort into the requirements phase and ITT document. Provided a good foundation for the process.
2. If your organisation doesn’t have much technical or web experience it may be an idea to ask for assistance from someone with an IT or web background to help you with the requirements for the project and to sit in on any interviews and short-listing.
3. Have a specific person to lead the project and act as a point of contact to answer any questions or request that come in.
4. We felt the information session was a good idea, helped answer questions and bring up some of the points we would face as well as weed out some potential proposals that would not have made the grade.
5. Making the deadline for submissions the day before a holiday could have been planned better by us and indeed completing the whole process over the July/August holiday period slowed the process down quite a bit.
6. We stuck to our schedule quite well but it took us considerably longer than expected (six weeks instead of an estimated three) to short list and interview the companies and reach our conclusion
7. It was worthwhile not to include the cost for development in the ITT as with a well detailed requirements document developers were able to give a fair assessment of the potential cost of development.

If you would like to see a copy of our Invitation to Tender document, wording for Telegraph article or advice on the process please contact richard.mcveigh@nicva.org.

Download the ITT outline document.

See also the useful links on the top right for other useful guides that formed the foundation for our ITT.