Posted: 2/15/2021

Question: Would the City of Conroe open to receiving a proposal solely for implementation support services? We do not offer software through our company but have supported the City of Philadelphia and the City of Vancouver, BC, Canada in the successful implementation of permits and licensing software. We would be grateful for the opportunity to provide the City with a proposal along with our methodology on selection and implementation. Please let us know if the City would be open to this type of proposal.

Response: No

Posted: 2/19/2021

Question: Does the city prefer electronic submission of bids or paper copies? The RFP mentions electronic but emphasizes printing instructions. Page 16 – 1. Preparation of RFPs: States “Unless otherwise directed in the Notice to Bidders, submit RFPs electronically through Vendor Registry or (one original, three manual copies and one digital copy) on the prescribed forms or copies thereof, along with Bid bond if required, in a sealed envelope marked "RFP # 0215-2021 City of Conroe, Permitting and Inspections Software”. Prepare RFPs in accordance with the requirements of the Notice to Bidders, and any instructions in the Proposal.”

Response: Please submit paper copies. No Electronic responses will be accepted for this RFP.

Posted: 2/24/2021

Question: Does the city prefer the solution be installed on-premise or hosted in the cloud (SaaS)?

Response: The city prefers the solution to be installed on-premise.

Posted: 3/3/2021

Question: Regarding data migrations - RFP states that data will be migrated from current system, BluePrince by Harris. Are there any other data migrations or access databases that would require migration to the new program? Is so, please clarify.

Response: To clarify, Blueprince is a product of Harris Computer. All data migration will be performed by the vendor that wins the bid. There are no other data migrations or access databases that would require migration to the new program

Posted: 3/9/2021

Question: Where in the proposal do you want vendors to include Appendix B, Application Requirements Checklist (23 pages)?

Response: Tab 19

Posted: 3/21/2021

Question: Will Docusign signatures be accepted as an original signature?

Response: No

Posted: 4/1/2021

Question: Has the city considered fully hosted/SaaS solutions?

Response: This is answered in Question #5

Posted: 4/9/2021

Question: Due to COVID-19 limitations, will the City consider waiving the notary requirements?

Response: No, if a form requires a notary then it must be notarized.

Posted: 4/9/2021

Question: What is the City’s anticipated budget?

Response: We don't have a budget number

Posted: 4/12/2021

Question: The City specifies in the Scope of Services section of the RFP that “The vendor should provide a complete solution including software, project planning, implementation services, conversion assistance, user training and support.” Will the City please elaborate on this expectation especially as it pertains to the City staff participating in the project? Will the City expect the vendor’s services team to do all work for data conversion, reporting, configuration, business automation, etc. or will the City be expecting to assign technical and subject matter staff to the project that will participate substantially?

Response: The city will not have a technical team and we will be limited on staff. We will aid in supplying the vendor with process outlines but we expect the vendor to do all work for data conversion, reporting, configuration, business automation, etc.

Posted: 4/12/2021

Question: Does the City have an expectation for the duration of the project and an established date for being production ready?

Response: We expect the duration of the project to be about 12 months from start to finish with an expected go-live in the Summer of 2022.

Posted: 4/12/2021

Question: 1. Are you looking to replace Laserfiche &/or OnBase? 2. How many documents reside in each system? 3. What is the current total storage space in each system? 4. If you are NOT looking to replace Laserfiche &/or OnBase, what functionality are you looking to augment? 5. In order of most important to least critical please list your priorities/changes you want to accomplish with this project. Looking at the Major Goals under Objectives, Digital Archival Migration under Scope of Services, Software Customization Plan Section 10 page 11, Data Conversion, Section 11 page 11, System Interface Plan Section 12 page 11 – Please help us to understand what is most critical day one, month 3, year 1, etc. and the timelines for a successful transition. Note: The scope for this project is sizeable & some things are obviously mission critical to accomplish initially & some items such as certain archival data may not require attention until later in the project. Another example of degree of priority – ‘True mobile up dates in real time for field inspections’ & ‘reduce / eliminate paper plans’ – We assume the mobile app in real time is an immediate need but scanning all of your existing paper plans may not be at the top of your list during the initial implementation. 6. Please elaborate in detail on your expectations for GIS integration capabilities. What info will need to be seen & by whom? What info do you want to see / capture? 7. Please provide further detail on the conversion of the BluePrince system: How many records/attachments exist in the current system? What file types (PDF, TIF, MS Office files, etc.) are the attachments? 8. What type of high availability or disaster recovery plan would need to be provided with the proposed system?

Response: Q&A ended 4/12/21 at 2:00 See time table listed in RFP 1) No, we do not use Laserfiche or OnBase. 2) N/A 3) N/A 4) While it is critical that our document hyperlinks are migrated to the new system, document management is only a small fraction of the scope of this RFP. 5) This will be a permit and inspection management software that incorporates workflow management. While the software conversion is taking place we will be utilizing our current system. We will not have a priority because we expect the migration of existing records and the new software to be 100% complete and operational on the go-live date. 6) A GIS based system will provide city staff system users the ability to see permit and inspection activity and permit records based on a spatial query; it will allow permit records to be created and tied to a geographical point. 7) Sufficient information was given in the RFP for a permitting and community development software company to estimate the number of records that would need to be migrated. It appears Ricoh-USA specializes more on document management solutions. In reference to the attachments, those documents can be in any digital format but are mainly Word documents and PDF’s 8) Maintaining all of our permitting and inspection records is critical and the city cannot have a system that crashes where data is lost.