City of Foster City
5/7/2024
REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS
VOIP Phone System Replacement
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9 The City of Foster City is requesting pricing for a VOIP Phone System Replacement, including professional services for deployment. The vendor selected will be responsible for the implementation and maintenance of all selected components, project management, training, and providing a complete installation that meets the City’s performance requirements.
The City invites you to submit a proposal to furnish materials in accordance with the terms, conditions, and specifications contained in this document. Please complete the proposal form as instructed below and return it to the specified e-mail address by the due date. No extensions to the deadline will be allowed. All responses must be in an email to:
TO: Rob Lasky
[email protected]
Due Date: 6/4/2024
The undersigned proposes to provide solution and installation services to the City for the stated prices in accordance with the terms and conditions set forth in this document.
VENDOR:
Company Name Street Address of Company
Signature of Officer City, State, Zip
Printed Name of Officer Telephone No.
Title of Officer Federal I.D. Tax Number
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9 This Request for Proposal includes the following Sections:
Section 1 Introduction / Background
Section 2 System Requirements
Section 3 RFP Submittal Requirements
Section 4 Project Services
Section 5 Vendor Evaluation Process
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
1.DATE DUE: 6/4/2024
2.QUESTIONS: Call Rob Lasky at 650-286-3216 or e-mail questions to [email protected]. All communication/questions are to be submitted by any vendor to Rob Lasky via e-mail. All responses to questions/clarifications will be posted on the City’s website as addendums and any vendor who has provided an e-mail will be notified via -email of the posting. Vendors are required to provide an e-mail address to which we may send responses.
3.REPLY FORMAT: The Vendor’s proposal, signed acknowledgment terms and conditions, including all attachments, must be returned by the due date with submittal. Vendors are required to clearly identify any limitations or exceptions to the requirements defined in this RFP. Alternative approaches will be given consideration if the approach clearly offers increased benefit to the City. The City is not responsible for non-receipt or misdelivery and that it is bidder's responsibility to ensure we have received their communication. The City’s e-mail system does not allow attachments larger than 25MB.
4.DEADLINES TIME ZONE: Where referred to in document, all times are in the Pacific Time Zone.
5.VENDOR QUALIFICATIONS: The vendor has been in business doing this type of work for at least the last three years.
6.RESPONSIVENESS AND SELECTION PROCESS: The decision for selection will be made on a combination of criteria, including: total cost (including ongoing operating costs); responsiveness to RFP, reputation of Vendor and products in similar installations; quality and completeness of proposal; Vendor's ability to perform in a timely fashion; and the City’s perception of Vendor’s stability within the industry.
The City reserves the right to reject any and all proposals or to waive any minor errors, discrepancies or irregularities. The selection will be at the discretion of the City and may be made in any manner that best meets the needs of the City.
7.FIRM PRICES: All quotes shall be held firm for a minimum of ninety (90) days after the proposal due date to allow adequate time for the City to consider each proposal and make an award. All blanks for unit price and total price shall be completed. All prices shall include sales tax where applicable. Any charges for boxing, packing, crating, cartage, handling, insurance, unloading, inside delivery, and any other related charges shall be included in the bid price provided on the Bid Form. Any discrepancy between the unit price and the extended or total price shall be determined by taking the lower price.
Upon receipt of this proposal by the City, the Vendor shall be presumed to be thoroughly familiar with all aspects of this work. The failure or omission to examine any location, equipment, form, instrument or document shall in no way relieve Vendor from any obligation with respect to this proposal.
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9 8.WARRANTY: The delivered and installed goods, equipment or services shall be warranted to be free from defects in materials and workmanship. The warranty period shall begin upon final acceptance by the City. As a minimum, all goods, equipment and services shall be warranted to operate satisfactorily in accordance with the requirements of these specifications, the representations of the Vendor and the published specifications of the manufacturer(s) for a period of at least one (1) year from the date of acceptance by the City.
9.CANCELLATION CLAUSE: The City may terminate and cancel any purchase order or contract that result from this RFP without obligation at any time prior to receipt of the goods or services.
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9 Section 1
1. Introduction / Background
1.1. The Project
The City of Foster City is requesting pricing for a VOIP Phone System Replacement. The vendor selected will be responsible for the implementation of all selected components, project management, training, and providing a complete installation that will meet the performance requirements as stated in final contract.
The vendor shall submit a proposed time-line schedule for implementation. The vendor will need to identify staff from their company who will be working on their team and confirm their availability for the duration of the project.
Tentative schedule and dates:
Release RFP 5/7/2024
Vendor Written Inquiries (on or before) 5/24/2024
City response to Written Inquiry (on or before) 5/27/2024 Proposals due from potential bidders 6/4/2024
Scripted Demos 6/17/2024 – 6/20/2024
Vendor Notified of accepted bids TBD
Award of Contract TBD
System Implementation TBD
1.2. Current Systems Environment
1.2.1. The City currently has 6 buildings within one city block connected by 1Gbps City-owned
62.5nm multimode fiber:
•City Hall
•Council Chambers
•Police Department
•Community Center
•Recreation Center
•Teen Center
1.2.2. 2 Other sites are connected via Comcast circuits and L2TP tunnels:
•Corporation Yard with 5 buildings (50Mbps)
•Sea Cloud Park Maintenance Shed (20Mbps)
1.2.3. Today, the City locations utilize Mitel (formerly Shoretel) on-prem equipment for VOIP and voicemail. The system is currently installed with a non-centralized design, with ShoreGear appliances at City Hall, Police Department, Recreation Center, and Corporation Yard.
1.2.4. Phone sets are a combination of Shoretel 115, 230, 230G, 265, and 655 models.
Network connection to each station is over Cat5e or Cat6 cabling at 1Gbps. The City uses Ubiquiti wired network switches and wireless access points.
1.2.5. The City utilizes 2 ISPs for redundancy. Both ISPs are terminated at City Hall, and all locations share these circuits for internet access. We currently use 35 SIP trunks to connect the Mitel system to the world. The SIP trunks are provided by our primary ISP (Utility Telecom), and are carried over our primary internet circuit.
1.2.6. The City’s application servers are currently virtualized using VMWare and Nutanix. If any on-prem servers are needed, the City prefers using virtualized servers.
1.2.7. The City uses Microsoft Windows for desktops and servers, and leverages the Microsoft Office 365 productivity suite and Microsoft Teams. All email boxes are housed in Exchange Online.
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9 Section 2
2. System Components
The following are the minimum requirements we expect from the vendor’s solution. Some requirements are specific to the City. We expect your response to address every requirement.
GENERAL
1. The City expects that the system will support standard telephone feature sets. These include but are not limited to:
(1) Call Forward-Busy
(2) Call Forward-No Answer
(3) Call Forward-All Calls
(4) Call Hold
(5) Call Logging (full Call Accounting is not necessary) (6) Reporting for Call Blocking/Dropped Calls
(7) Call Park
(8) Call Transfer
(9) Call Waiting Indication
(10)Dial-by-name Directory
(11)Redial
(12)Account Code for International Access
(13)Outbound Caller ID
(14)Incoming Caller ID
(15)Music on Hold
(16)Internal 4 digit dialing
(17)Auto Attendants (voicemail trees)
2. E911 configurability that allows defining address and location inside building for each phone.
Describe how this would work when using softphone or Teams.
3. Vendor will be expected to coordinate the seamless porting of current DID numbers to new system.
PHONE SETS
4. Built-in network switch that allows daisy-chaining PC from phone at 1Gbps.
5. Compatibility with QOS.
6. Phones should be POE. Please provide the POE standard (POE, POE+, etc.) and wattage used by phone sets.
7. Provide costs for wall-mount kits for each phone type proposed.
APPLICATION
8. Softphone capability with Windows, iOS, and Android app.
9. Single-Sign-On for app login that supports SAML/Azure AD.
10. Microsoft Teams integration. The City prefers a system that can use Microsoft Teams to answer and make calls. It is acceptable if your solution has its own client app, but solutions that offer a Teams integration will be given preference.
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9 11. Twinning – Allow users to set up simultaneous ring for incoming calls to both their desk phone/softphone and cell phone. The operation should allow end users on an active desk phone call to select an option to move the call to their cell phone.
12. Ability to receive and send SMS via DID number (OPTIONAL)
13. Click to dial from Outlook contacts or phone numbers on websites (OPTIONAL)
14. Ad hoc Call Recording – the system should allow calls to be recorded On-Demand and allows easy access to retrieving these recordings. Does the ad hoc recording solution record calls from the beginning of the call or at the time a button is pressed?
15. Voicemail delivery to user via email. Can deleting from Outlook also delete the message from the voicemail system?
16. Application should provide context-sensitive user help, as well as a searchable full-system help function.
SPECIFIC SCENARIOS
17. Call Coverage – The Police Department has a unique operation for answering calls. During workhours, Police Records answers the main department line via a hunt group. When Police Records staff leave, they forward the hunt group to Police Dispatch so calls to the department number never go unanswered nor to voicemail. Please describe any limitations of the system to provide this feature.
18. Call Park – The Police Department answers calls to the Police Department’s department lines via 4 analog lines from our Shoretel system connected to the 911 PBX. They use call transfer via hook flash as well as call park via hook flash to park a call while they alert officers via radio to pick up the parked call slot. Describe how they could use this feature and know what park slot the call is in. Describe what happens if the parked call is not picked up.
19. Outbound Caller ID – Ability to assign outgoing caller ID individually by station. Most of our lines send out the DID number for caller ID. For example, the Police Department may need to send out the department number only, while the accounting and finance groups may choose to send out their own DID number on outgoing calls. We may also need to send no Caller ID info for certain users (Detectives, for example).
20. Overhead Paging – The City has Valcom or Bogen units at each of our buildings, and the phone system must be able to interface with them. The Valcom unit at City Hall is multi-zone (one zone for each of our 3 floors, and one for all floors)
21. Faxing – Provide your solution for migrating fax capabilities and the costs associated.
Explain if this is included in the IP Telephony solution or is an additional service. Can the City keep physical fax machines with your solution? Will we be able to port over the fax numbers from AT&T 1MB lines?
22. Analog – Provide your solution for providing analog lines for devices such as fire alarms, or elevator call boxes.
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9 PRELIMINARY INVENTORY
These counts are preliminary and will be finalized during agreement negotiations.
Phone set + full feature set 45
Phone set + no feature set (for conf rooms,
lunch rooms, etc.)
48 Softphone + full feature set 96
Fax 15
Other Analog 9
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9 Section 3
3. Proposal Submittal Requirements - below are all the items that must be submitted by the Vendor. Any Vendor who fails to include responses to the following requirements shall be deemed non-responsive.
3.1. Requirement A - General
3.1.1. Proposed Timeline for Implementation
3.1.2. Copy of proposed Maintenance Contract which includes support options
3.2. Requirement B - Pricing Sheet
3.2.1. Upfront Hardware Cost (including freight and tax)
3.2.2. Upfront Software Licensing/Subscription Cost
3.2.3. Ongoing Annual Maintenance/Subscription Cost
3.2.4. All Professional Services Costs (See Section 4)
3.2.5. Additional Modules/Components Price(s) (Optional) City of Foster City RFP – VOIP Phone System Replacement 10 2
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9 Section 4
4. Project Services
4.1. Installation and Integration
Vendor shall be responsible to install and integrate all software/components to complete the system to ‘final acceptance’ by the City. The City shall determine the final decision on the installation work to be done by whom and when.
4.2. Training
4.2.1. Vendor shall do knowledge transfer to City Project Team during the course of the implementation.
4.2.2. Vendor shall provide pricing for an administrator training session for all designated system admins. Vendor shall propose suggested length of administrator training sessions for each purchased module,
4.2.3. Vendor shall provide pricing for in-person and/or virtual training for end users of the proposed system. Please include: the length (in hours) of the training sessions for each purchased module, the suggested maximum number of participants for each class, and whether users will be expected to have a PC available to be hands-on during training.
4.3. Maintenance and Support
Vendor shall submit a three year maintenance pricing structure so the City can prepare the necessary budget. Vendor shall detail what the maintenance/support contract covers – vendor responsibility and city responsibility.
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9 Section 5
5. Vendor Evaluation Process
A multi-phase evaluation process will be used to evaluate and choose the final vendor. At the end of each phase only those vendors that have passed the current phase will move forward to the next.
5.1. Selection/Evaluation Criteria for RFP Proposals
Proposals will be reviewed by a cross-functional group of staff members from Foster City’s operating departments. An evaluation matrix will be used to rate proposals based on the items submitted (see Section 4 for submittal requirements).
A subset of vendors will be requested to perform 1 to 2 hour scripted demos during the week of 6/17/2024-6/20/2024. Selected vendors will be contacted during the week of 6/10/2024 to set up a timeslot for their demo.
5.1.1. Project Specific Evaluation
RFP Format Response Section
The vendor shall respond to all the areas listed in Section 3. The vendor shall describe how their proposal will meet the objectives, tasks, requirements, and other services identified in this document.