rfp

Southwest Horizon School DivisionRequest for Proposals

Provision of a Wide Area Network

Applications are invited for proposals to provide a Wide Area Network (WAN) as outlined below.

Intention to Bid - In order to receive any additional information regarding this RFP (e.g. amendments, additional information, etc.) each Proponent should email Keith Murray at [email protected] by 12:00 noon, October 21, 2012. Southwest Horizon School Division will use the contact information to send out any updates and clarifications to the RFP.

Proposals must be emailed no later than 12:00 Noon, Friday, November 25, 2011 to:

Keith MurrayTechnology CoordinatorSouthwest Horizon School [email protected]

Subject line to indicate “SHSD WAN Proposal”. An acknowledgement of receipt will be issued.

Intent: Southwest Horizon School Division seeks to implement a secure, reliable high-speed network to connect its schools, operational locations and administrative offices.

Southwest Horizon School Division 1

Introduction

Southwest Horizon School Division includes seven community school locations and five Divisional support locations. These are listed in Appendix A. The Division also includes five Hutterite colony schools that are supported under a separate service.

Existing Infrastructure

The division currently operates a Division wide VOIP provided by Unity Telecom. A video conference system (Cisco) connects a studio in each of the seven schools. In addition to the studios, some teaching is also done using a MOVI client between student and teacher workstations. The student information service, First Class, is hosted in Alberta and is reached via MERLIN.

Local servers are in use in some sites. The divisions plan calls for the ability to manage its servers remotely and utilize the system during non-school hours to run maintenance such as server back-ups. Some centralized server access to our smaller sites is also desirable. QoS is currently done by edge routers located at each site. Our core router is currently located in Brandon at the offices of Inetlink.

SHSD does own towers and/or masts at each of the school locations with the exception of Pierson School. Towers and masts are available for inspection.

Our current contract expires on February 22. 2012. The successful vendor will need to provide contingencies for service from the period from February 23 to the point of fully deployment on August 6, 2012.

Purpose and Goals

The division wishes to establish a wide area network (WAN) that extends to all 12 locations. See Appendix A for site requirements.

There are three possible builds:

1. Creating a fully meshed WAN owned and operated by the Division with a maintenance agreement with the winning vendor.

2. Entering into a user arrangement with a Service Provider for establishment of a private fully meshed WAN.

3. Either of the above two scenarios with the inclusion of a remotely managed local area network (LAN) within each school site.

The WAN would be used as an internal communication system to transmit and receive email, network management data, administrative data, library services, VOIP telephone and HD video conferencing and video streaming. Ideally, access to the Internet would be at a single point connecting our VLAN to the PDN and to MERLIN via our data centre in Souris.


Project Details

The proponent is asked to provide a complete and final price including all make ready inside wiring costs and termination. Monthly costs for the duration of the initial contract based on the needs shown in Appendix A must be listed. It is understood that it will be difficult to give complete and final costs for many sites until an on-site survey is complete. Quotes that include any and all cost plus pricing for building entrance, in-building wiring and termination are acceptable.

The proponent is requested to address the following in their proposal:

- The recommended logical and physical configuration of the WAN given the communication needs outlined in Appendix A

- Hardware technology to be used for the WANo An indication as to the minimum of full duplex connectivity for the backbone

connecting all school sites. Preference will be given to a non-proprietary technology; 802.11x where wireless connectivity is required.

o Redundancy with automatic failover and identical bandwidth in the backbone connection.

o For a period of the first 24 months- A minimum of 100 mbps, full duplex, to the Souris Garage- A minimum requirement of 30 Mbps, full duplex school sites- A minimum of 50 Mbps, full duplex, for Souris School- A minimum of 10Mbps, full duplex for Divisional offices, Hartney Board Room

and the Melita garageo Specify minimum band width within the WAN from site to siteo We anticipate increased demands for bandwidth after the first 24 months of the

contract. Indicate the capability of increasing levels of service and the mechanism for negotiating the rates for added service (the initial contract for service would extend longer than 24 months)

o A secure private network where all traffic connects to the Souris Garage hosting the core router

o Current Layer 3 routers at school sites to be compliant with new LANo End to End QoS – explain in detail how the vendor will guarantee that real time traffic

(voice/video) will traverse the network with out any delay, jitter or latency. Specify what queuing, congestion and traffic shaping mechanisms will be used on the customer edge (demark) devices and within their core network

o Flexible bandwidth to all sites based on quarterly evaluations of usageo Indicate service levels for VOIP and video conferencing (99.999% uptime?). How will

communication occur without any (minimal) delay, jitter or latency.

- Assurances that any wireless radio equipment used will not interfere or be interfered with by any wireless radio services currently operating in the network region. The Division’s preference is for the utilization of hardwired or fiber connections.

- No disruptions during working hours and a guarantee of service following any maintenance or servicing. Indicate response times for outages, especially those affecting VOIP and VC.


- The costs of a maintenance agreement and details of the services provided for maintenance and administration of the WAN connectivity:

o Defining the service level guarantees available to Southwest Horizon School Division to meet business requirements and client expectations. Bellamy Software and First Class Software are hosted remotely and require a secure, reliable connection.

o Documentation clarifying expectations for the roles and responsibilities of the Proponent and Southwest Horizon School Division and identifying exclusions

o Describing maximum time and process for disaster recovery, bandwidth reinstatement and guaranteed dataflow.

- If needed, provision of all applications and certifications for approval of any new constructed and existing towers utilized and provision of a warranty.

- Provision of the following project milestones and a preliminary schedule for when these targets will be met/delivered including:

o Identification of all tasks on the critical path with task start dates, end dates and milestone dates with a decision making contact listed.

o Indication of any tasks dependent on third partieso Indication of dependencies between major tasks

Proponents must:

- Propose how they would participate in project management with Southwest Horizon School Division’s Senior Administration and the Division’s Technology Coordinator

- Propose a meeting/communications schedule with expectations for status of participants. Proponents must submit a proposed WAN acceptance test plan and develop a no risk proof of concept installation with an option to purchase by Southwest Horizon School Division if it meets requirements.

- Proponents must propose a mediation process for implementation of project changes or variances

The successful proponent shall be solely responsible for construction safety at the place of work and for the compliance with the rules, regulations and practices required by all applicable construction health and safety regulations and legislations. Further, the successful proponent shall be responsible for initiating, maintaining and supervising all safety precautions and programs in connection with the performance of the construction.


Evaluation of Submissions

Selection will be based upon technical ability, management ability, financial costs and systems manageability as outlined above in the project details.

Proposals will be evaluated in accordance with the criteria outlined below. Proposals including enhanced solutions, trusted education customer references and partnership opportunities will receive preferred status.

- All specifications, terms and conditions outlined in the Request for Proposals are met and complied with

- Network performance and speed- Network reliability and redundancy- Quality and timeliness of network maintenance- Security of the network- Acquisition and support costs- Flexibility and capacity for the enhancement of future bandwidth capabilities- Financial health of the vendor- Product warranties- Submission of satisfactory references and quality of references- Criteria of the network bandwidth being met- Implementation plan


Terms & Conditions

1. The Southwest Horizon School Division will be solely responsible for the review of the responses to this RFP and the decision regarding appropriate next steps.

2. The issuance of this RFP does not commit Southwest Horizon School Division to award a contract.

3. The Southwest Horizon School Division reserves the right to seek clarifications, alterations and enhancements from any or all proponents and to select and combine partial solutions from different proponent’s submissions.

4. The Southwest Horizon School Division reserves the right to accept in whole or in part or reject any proposal or any part thereof, and to cancel the RFP process and reject all proposals at any time, without incurring any liability to the affected bidders or any obligation to inform the affected bidders of the grounds for the school division’s actions.

5. The result of the RFP evaluation may depend on additional factors not described in this RFP, and could result in the issuing of one or more additional formal RFPs or the entering into formal contract negotiations with one or more proponents.

6. All prices provided are to be denominated in Canadian dollars (CAD) and be firm for a period of ninety (90) days from the closing date of this Request for Proposal (RFP).

7. The lowest priced proposal may not necessarily be selected.

8. RFP responses must be emailed to:

Keith MurrayTechnology CoordinatorSouthwest Horizon School [email protected]

no later than 12:00 noon, November 25, 2011. Responses received after this submission deadline will not be considered. A confirmation of receipt will be issued.

9. All received responses to this RFP shall become the confidential property of the Southwest Horizon School Division and will not be returned to the proponents.

10. Proponents undertake preparation of responses to this RFP at their own cost. Southwest Horizon School Division will not be liable for any of the costs incurred in the preparation of responses to this RFP.


Appendix ASite Locations and Requirements


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