6-RFP-309-26 Addendum 1.pdf

RFP 309-26 - ADDENDUM #1

Information Technology Public Website Maintenance and Support

September 11, 2026

The attached addendum supersedes the original Information and Specifications regarding RFP-309-26 where it adds to, deletes from, clarifies or otherwise modifies. All other conditions and any previous addendums shall remain unchanged.

Proposals must be submitted electronically on or before the Close Date provided on the Boulder County Euna (formerly Bonfire) portal.

Important: No archives (zip files) or links to external sites or files will be accepted. This includes Google Docs and similar sites. All submittals must be received as an attachment in a widely-accessible format such as PDF, Word, or Excel.

Electronic submittals must be received on the Bonfire portal. Submittals sent to any other box will be rejected. It is the sole responsibility of the proposer to ensure their documents are received before the deadline referenced above. Boulder County does not accept responsibility under any circumstance for delayed or failed submittals. No exceptions will be made.

The Board of County Commissioners reserve the right to reject any and all bids, to waive any informalities or irregularities therein, and to accept the bid that, in the opinion of the Board, is in the best interest of the Board and of the County of Boulder, State of Colorado.

https://bouldercounty.bonfirehub.com/ https://bouldercounty.bonfirehub.com/

Questions and Answers for RFP 309-26 - ADDENDUM #1

1. Question: Would the County consider migrating to another open-source content management system other than WordPress?

• Answer: No, this is out of scope and would need to be considered as a separate effort and a separate RFP.

2. Question: What is current daily/monthly traffic (DAU/pageviews) across the 11 sites, particularly bouldercounty.gov and Election Night Reporting during peak periods?

• Answer: Answer: Boulder County’s websites:

i) Boulder County (https://bouldercounty.gov) – 4234 pages, 4.1 million visits, 7.3 million pageviews in 2025

ii) Boulder Office of Disaster Management (https://boulderODM.gov) – 1416 pages

iii) Sport Shooting Partners (https://sportshootingpartners.org) – 9 pages, 20k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

iv) Wildfire Partners (https://wildfirepartners.org) – 99 pages, 111k visits, 188k pageviews in

v) Boulder County Impact (https://bouldercountyimpact.org) – 1 page

vi) Pace Partners (https://pacepartners.com) – 42 pages, 12k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

vii) Energy Smart YES (https://energysmartyes.com) – 45 pages, 40k visits, 65k pageviews in

viii) Boco Suma (https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp) - 2 pages

ix) Boulder Incident Management Team (https://imt.bouldercounty.gov) – 6 pages, 327 visits, 599 pageviews in 2025

x) WellMind Connection (https://wellmindconnection.org) – 13 pages, 11k visits, 16k pageviews in 2025

xi) Rebuilding Better (https://rebuildingbetter.org) – under construction https://bouldercounty.gov/ https://boulderodm.gov/ https://sportshootingpartners.org/ https://wildfirepartners.org/ https://bouldercountyimpact.org/ https://pacepartners.com/ https://energysmartyes.com/ https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp https://imt.bouldercounty.gov/ https://wellmindconnection.org/ https://rebuildingbetter.org/

3. Question: Does the $175k cap include AWS infrastructure/hosting costs (pass-through), or is it labor-only with the county paying AWS directly?

• Answer: Correct, this not to exceed budget is for labor only. AWS hosting, services, subscriptions, plugins are all purchased by Boulder County.

4. Question: **Workers' Compensation:** If a vendor is not legally required to maintain Workers' Compensation insurance under Colorado law due to its ownership/company structure, will Boulder County accept the applicable exemption in lieu of the Workers' Compensation coverage specified in Exhibit A?

• Answer: If a vendor is not required by Colorado State Law to carry workers compensation insurance, a waiver form is available to be signed in place of a workers compensation certificate of insurance.

5. Question: **Workers' Compensation:** If a vendor is not legally required to maintain Workers' Compensation insurance under Colorado law due to its ownership/company structure, will Boulder County accept the applicable exemption in lieu of the Workers' Compensation coverage specified in Exhibit A?

• Answer: If a vendor is not required by Colorado State Law to carry workers compensation insurance, a waiver form is available to be signed in place of a workers compensation certificate of insurance.

6. Question: **WordPress Minimum Qualifications:** The RFP lists experience with a substantial number of specific WordPress plugins, themes, and custom child plugins under Minimum Qualifications. Is prior experience with every individually listed product/customization required, or will comparable experience with equivalent WordPress technologies and custom development satisfy this requirement?

• Answer: Comparable experience is acceptable, please highlight where you feel your experience is relevant and comparable to the plugins, theme, and customizations that Boulder County is using. Our desire is to find a vendor that requires minimal training and orientation with our websites and how they are built and maintained. Vendors that are not experienced will require additional expenses for Boulder County that will limit our abilities to make further enhancements. Additionally, our websites could experience undesirable outages or downtime in order for vendors to become familiar and competent with our code and customizations.

7. Question: **Current AWS Environment:** Can Boulder County provide a high-level overview of the existing AWS environment, including the number of AWS accounts, approximate number of workloads/resources, and current account/governance structure?

• Answer: We utilize the following services from AWS: Aurora and RDS, Certificate Manager, CloudFront, Control Tower, EC2, EFS, Elasticache, Elastic Beanstalk, GuardDuty, Lambda, Route53, Service Manager, Simple Email Service, Simple Notification Service, S3, Systems Manager, VPC, WAF & Shield

8. Question: **Historical Workload:** Can Boulder County provide historical information on the approximate volume of support requests, development/enhancement hours, or projects performed under the current contract during the last 12 months?

• Answer: In 2025, Boulder County used 1362 hours worth of maintenance and support. This is not broken down by type of request as our current vendor charges a uniform rate for time and materials, which was not broken down any further. So far in 2026, Boulder County has consumed 230 hours of maintenance and support.

9. Question: **After-Hours Support and SLAs:** The SOW references after-hours work, emergency support, Election Night support, outage monitoring, and incident response. Is the selected vendor expected to provide formal 24x7 on-call coverage? Are there defined response and resolution-time SLAs for support requests?

• Answer: Election night support varies on the number of Elections in a given year, some years there are three elections (the main election in November and two primaries) and in other years there may be a single election. Election night support typically starts at 7 PM and runs through 12 AM, although the expectation is that if required the support would include the entire evening or 24 hours of support for Election day and the day after the election. After hours support and emergency support have been minimal and infrequent. So much so that we do not have these documented. Our current vendor does not charge us a different rate, so we cannot validate these occurrences against our billing. Resolution of issues resulted in a matter of hours at most.

10. Question: **Staffing Model:** Does Boulder County expect vendors to propose a dedicated team with named resources for each discipline, or is a lead consultant supported by additional specialists as required an acceptable delivery model?

• Answer: Lead consultant is sufficient for operational support, although Boulder County would like named resources identified as due diligence that the winning vendor has the expected resources available, as needed.

11. Question: **Pricing and Annual Budget:** The SOW references a current not-to-exceed value of $175,000 per year and expresses a preference for alternatives to traditional time-and-materials pricing. Should vendors treat $175,000 as the anticipated annual spend for the complete scope or as a maximum ceiling? Would the County consider a monthly support/maintenance retainer with larger enhancements and projects separately scoped and priced?

• Answer: $175,000 is the maximum ceiling. If Boulder County has the need to exceed this amount, it will require a contract amendment that will be agreeable to both parties. A monthly support/maintenance retainer with larger enhancements and projects separately scoped and priced is acceptable.

12. Question: **Incumbent and Transition:** Is there currently an incumbent vendor providing these services, and if so, will the incumbent participate in a formal transition and knowledge-transfer period with the selected vendor?

• Answer: This is an incumbent vendor providing these services. There will not be a knowledge-transfer period.

13. Question: **Initial Technical Assessment:** The SOW requests a full technical assessment of the existing workflow, hosting configuration, AWS services, WordPress configuration, and customizations. Should vendors include this assessment within their ongoing service pricing, or should it be proposed as a separate initial deliverable?

• Answer: Either proposal is acceptable. The Initial Technical Assessment will be included in the first year’s budget of $175,000 from Boulder County’s perspective.

14. Question: Can a company bid on just a portion of the RFP, or can the response be created by a Prime with multiple Subcontractors?

• Answer: Subcontractors are not acceptable. Boulder County is seeking a single vendor for our maintenance and support of our websites.

15. Question: For bids on this contract, are you open to a local company that uses development resources in Europe? Our long relationship with our agency partner in Europe allows us to scale as needed and provide expertise in a larger range of technologies.

• Answer: Subcontractors are not acceptable. Boulder County is seeking a single vendor for our maintenance and support of our websites. As long as your European resources are a legal part of your organization, there is no concern from Boulder County.

16. Question: We would like clarification regarding the project reference requirement. May the proposer use relevant projects completed by its key personnel or named team members to satisfy the project reference requirement, provided those individuals are clearly identified in the proposal and the applicable project contact information is included, even if the projects were performed by those individuals under a different organization rather than under the proposing company’s name?

• Answer: Our preference is to have only projects referenced for work performed by the vendor’s organization, not the references of others. The goal is to understand the capabilities of the organization and their ability to support our websites.

17. Question: Will the current development team be involved in knowledge transfer to the new team?

• Answer: Boulder County technical and content creators will be involved in the knowledge transfer. The incumbent vendor will not be involved in the knowledge transfer.

18. Question: In considering the monitoring portion of the websites, could you share the 11 site URLs and the approximate page count for each?

• Answer: Boulder County’s websites:

i) Boulder County (https://bouldercounty.gov) – 4234 pages, 4.1 million visits, 7.3 million pageviews in 2025

ii) Boulder Office of Disaster Management (https://boulderODM.gov) – 1416 pages

iii) Sport Shooting Partners (https://sportshootingpartners.org) – 9 pages, 20k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

iv) Wildfire Partners (https://wildfirepartners.org) – 99 pages, 111k visits, 188k pageviews in

v) Boulder County Impact (https://bouldercountyimpact.org) – 1 page

vi) Pace Partners (https://pacepartners.com) – 42 pages, 12k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

vii) Energy Smart YES (https://energysmartyes.com) – 45 pages, 40k visits, 65k pageviews in

viii) Boco Suma (https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp) - 2 pages

ix) Boulder Incident Management Team (https://imt.bouldercounty.gov) – 6 pages, 327 visits, 599 pageviews in 2025 https://bouldercounty.gov/ https://boulderodm.gov/ https://sportshootingpartners.org/ https://wildfirepartners.org/ https://bouldercountyimpact.org/ https://pacepartners.com/ https://energysmartyes.com/ https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp https://imt.bouldercounty.gov/

x) WellMind Connection (https://wellmindconnection.org) – 13 pages, 11k visits, 16k pageviews in 2025

xi) Rebuilding Better (https://rebuildingbetter.org) – under construction

19. Question: Please confirm if AWS hosting management is fully vendor scope or partly retained by County IT.

• Answer: AWS hosting management is a shared responsibility of the vendor and Boulder County, with Boulder County managing the expenses of the platform and services.

20. Question: Clarify the vendor selection date and the expected start date after award.

• Answer: Vendor selection is expected to be completed in October with contract negotiation and completion before December 31, 2026. Vendor will start on January 1, 2027 with a possibility of knowledge transfer happening in December 2026.

21. Question: Approximate volume of content/pages across the 11 WordPress sites to be supported.

• Answer: Answer: Boulder County’s websites:

i) Boulder County (https://bouldercounty.gov) – 4234 pages, 4.1 million visits, 7.3 million pageviews in 2025

ii) Boulder Office of Disaster Management (https://boulderODM.gov) – 1416 pages

iii) Sport Shooting Partners (https://sportshootingpartners.org) – 9 pages, 20k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

iv) Wildfire Partners (https://wildfirepartners.org) – 99 pages, 111k visits, 188k pageviews in

v) Boulder County Impact (https://bouldercountyimpact.org) – 1 page

vi) Pace Partners (https://pacepartners.com) – 42 pages, 12k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

vii) Energy Smart YES (https://energysmartyes.com) – 45 pages, 40k visits, 65k pageviews in

viii) Boco Suma (https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp) - 2 pages https://wellmindconnection.org/ https://rebuildingbetter.org/ https://bouldercounty.gov/ https://boulderodm.gov/ https://sportshootingpartners.org/ https://wildfirepartners.org/ https://bouldercountyimpact.org/ https://pacepartners.com/ https://energysmartyes.com/ https://bocosuma.com/en

ix) Boulder Incident Management Team (https://imt.bouldercounty.gov) – 6 pages, 327 visits, 599 pageviews in 2025

x) WellMind Connection (https://wellmindconnection.org) – 13 pages, 11k visits, 16k pageviews in 2025

xi) Rebuilding Better (https://rebuildingbetter.org) – under construction

22. Question: For accessibility compliance, should vendors plan full audits annually or only targeted remediation.

• Answer: Boulder County has subscriptions to Siteimprove for daily accessibility scans as well as a monthly subscription to Siteimprove’s Manual Testing as a Service that provides specific page audits. The awarded vendor is expected to assist with implementation of accessibility issues identified using these tools/services. No additional audits are needed from the vendor.

23. Question: Will Boulder County provide a content inventory of the sites, or should vendors conduct audit/discovery.

• Answer: Boulder County will provide an inventory as well as access to all of our tools/subscriptions we use to monitor and audit our websites.

24. Question: Confirm if large enhancement projects (e.g., Election Night Reporting) will be scoped separately as fixed-bid outside the annual maintenance budget.

• Answer: This is dependent on the vendor’s proposed pricing structure. The $175,000 not to exceed budget should be inclusive of any/all enhancement projects.

25. Question: Please confirm if training is expected in-person, virtual, or recorded modules.

• Answer: Virtual and recorded modules are acceptable.

26. Question: Clarify if pricing model preference is fixed bid, retainer, or time & materials within the $175,000 ceiling.

• Answer: Boulder County is open to all options with a preference to move away from time and materials pricing.

27. Question: Confirm if insurance requirements must be met at proposal stage or only upon contract award.

• Answer: This question is still under review, Boulder County will respond by 4:00 PM MDT, September 14, via addendum.

https://imt.bouldercounty.gov/

28. Question: Are the Minimum Qualifications in Section N pass/fail requirements, or are they scored within the evaluation criteria?

• Answer: Section N is not pass/fail, relevant experience will be evaluated and used as part of the evaluation of the overall proposal.

29. Question: May a prime vendor satisfy any of the Minimum Qualifications through a named subcontractor? If so, how are subcontractor qualifications evaluated?

• Answer: Subcontractors are not acceptable. Boulder County is seeking a single vendor for our maintenance and support of our websites.

30. Question: Is the $175,000 annual not-to-exceed inclusive of fixed-bid enhancement projects, or are those budgeted separately?

• Answer: This is inclusive. If Boulder County should reach the $175,000 budget and still need additional services, this would require a contract amendment signed by both parties.

31. Question: Does the $175,000 include AWS infrastructure costs, or does the County pay AWS directly?

If the vendor is responsible for reserved instance purchasing, please confirm who holds the AWS billing relationship.

• Answer: Boulder County maintains the billing relationship with AWS as well as all plugins, themes, and subscriptions, which are not included in in the $175,000 budget.

32. Question: What was actual spend against the not-to-exceed in the most recent contract year, and roughly how did it split between ongoing maintenance and enhancement work?

• Answer: In 2025, Boulder County spent $217,913.56 for maintenance and support. These costs are not broken down any further, as our current vendor charges a uniform rate for all services.

33. Question: How many after-hours, emergency, and election night support events occurred in the past 12 months, and what were the typical hours involved?

• Answer: Election night support varies on the number of Elections in a given year, some years there are three elections (the main election in November and two primaries) and in other years there may be a single election. Election night support typically starts at 7 PM and runs through 12 AM, although the expectation is that if required the support would include the entire evening or 24 hours of support for Election day and the day after the election. After hours support and emergency support have been minimal and infrequent. So much so that we do not have these documented. Our current vendor does not charge us a different rate, so we cannot validate these occurrences against our billing. Resolution of issues resulted in a matter of hours at most.

34. Question: Does the County own the AWS account with the vendor granted IAM access, or does the vendor hold root and billing?

• Answer: Boulder County maintains the billing relationship with AWS as well as all plugins, themes, and subscriptions, which are not included in in the $175,000 budget. Awarded vendors will have the minimum needed credentials to perform the work needed.

35. Question: At transition, will the County provide the awarded vendor with current architecture documentation, source repositories, and the existing child plugins listed in Section N?

• Answer: Yes, the vendor will receive all necessary access, permissions, code and tools/services needed to be successful.

36. Question: Is a transition or onboarding period contemplated, and is it funded within or outside the annual not-to-exceed?

• Answer: Our desire is to transition maintenance and support in December, but this will be dependent upon contract completion and a remainder of our current year’s budget. This cost should be considered as funded within the current not-to-exceed budget.

37. Question: Are Beanstalkapp, DeployBot, and Trello required going forward, or may a vendor propose equivalent source control, deployment, and project management tooling?

• Answer: Proposed changes are acceptable, with the understanding that the transition will happen over time and the vendor will be expected to work with these existing tools/services until that transition has successfully happened.

38. Question: What accessibility audit findings currently exist across the 11 sites, and is remediation of known findings expected within the maintenance scope?

• Answer: Accessibility reports, audits, and remediation plans are an ongoing effort for all of our websites. Not all of our partnership sites have been fully audited, but all use the same theme and set of plugins that have been remediated with the same set of enhancements to be compliant. Additionally, please review our quarterly report updates here:

https://bouldercounty.gov/government/ada-eeo-notices/digital-accessibility-quarterly-reports/

39. Question: Given that the awarded vendor will not be the sole provider for web accessibility, how does the County allocate contractual responsibility for WCAG 2.1 to 2.2 conformance among its providers?

• Answer: Boulder County has subscriptions to Siteimprove for daily accessibility scans as well as a monthly subscription to Siteimprove’s Manual Testing as a Service that provides specific page audits. The awarded vendor is expected to assist with implementation of accessibility issues identified using these tools/services. No additional audits are needed from the vendor.

40. Question: Does the County require a security or data handling review before a vendor may use AI tooling against County systems or content?

• Answer: Our data security requirements are in the county's contract template, and we will need a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement before gaining access to any county systems. A vendor wishing to expose county data to an AI will need to be certain they are prepared to meet and explain how they meet county and federal data security requirements, as well as maintaining their own reasonable security program. By default, vendors should assume that they may not use AI tooling on county data unless they confirm otherwise.

41. Question: Is there a required proposal format, page limit, or section ordering the County would like vendors to follow?

• Answer: No specific format is required.

42. Question: What are the domain names of the 11 sites?

• Answer: Boulder County’s websites:

i) Boulder County (https://bouldercounty.gov) – 4234 pages, 4.1 million visits, 7.3 million pageviews in 2025

ii) Boulder Office of Disaster Management (https://boulderODM.gov) – 1416 pages

iii) Sport Shooting Partners (https://sportshootingpartners.org) – 9 pages, 20k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

iv) Wildfire Partners (https://wildfirepartners.org) – 99 pages, 111k visits, 188k pageviews in

v) Boulder County Impact (https://bouldercountyimpact.org) – 1 page

vi) Pace Partners (https://pacepartners.com) – 42 pages, 12k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

vii) Energy Smart YES (https://energysmartyes.com) – 45 pages, 40k visits, 65k pageviews in

viii) Boco Suma (https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp) - 2 pages https://bouldercounty.gov/ https://boulderodm.gov/ https://sportshootingpartners.org/ https://wildfirepartners.org/ https://bouldercountyimpact.org/ https://pacepartners.com/ https://energysmartyes.com/

x) WellMind Connection (https://wellmindconnection.org) – 13 pages, 11k visits, 16k pageviews in 2025

xi) Rebuilding Better (https://rebuildingbetter.org) – under construction

43. Question: How large are the sites? Page and Post count for each.

• Answer: Boulder County’s websites:

i) Boulder County (https://bouldercounty.gov) – 4234 pages, 4.1 million visits, 7.3 million pageviews in 2025

ii) Boulder Office of Disaster Management (https://boulderODM.gov) – 1416 pages

iii) Sport Shooting Partners (https://sportshootingpartners.org) – 9 pages, 20k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

iv) Wildfire Partners (https://wildfirepartners.org) – 99 pages, 111k visits, 188k pageviews in

v) Boulder County Impact (https://bouldercountyimpact.org) – 1 page

vi) Pace Partners (https://pacepartners.com) – 42 pages, 12k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

vii) Energy Smart YES (https://energysmartyes.com) – 45 pages, 40k visits, 65k pageviews in

viii) Boco Suma (https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp) - 2 pages

ix) Boulder Incident Management Team (https://imt.bouldercounty.gov) – 6 pages, 327 visits, 599 pageviews in 2025

x) WellMind Connection (https://wellmindconnection.org) – 13 pages, 11k visits, 16k

xi) Rebuilding Better (https://rebuildingbetter.org) – under construction https://imt.bouldercounty.gov/ https://rebuildingbetter.org/ https://bouldercounty.gov/ https://boulderodm.gov/ https://sportshootingpartners.org/ https://wildfirepartners.org/ https://bouldercountyimpact.org/ https://pacepartners.com/ https://energysmartyes.com/ https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp https://imt.bouldercounty.gov/

44. Question: Can you provide detailed descriptions of customized plugins for each site, and their function.

• Answer: Section N of our Statement of Work lists all of our commercial plugins, which you can find descriptions from the appropriate marketplace or online repositories for each plugin. All other custom plugins include a short description of their functionality.

45. Question: Do you have clear and detailed documentation mentioned on the RFP already from the current vendor?

• Answer: No, some areas of the design and infrastructure are documented. The solution is a collaboration between Boulder County’s IT staff and our vendor, so the responsibility for documentation is shared or lies with Boulder County. This information will be shared with the winning bidder.

46. Question: Who is responsible for software/plugin licensing costs?

• Answer: Boulder County maintains the billing relationship with AWS as well as all plugins, themes, and subscriptions, which are not included in the $175,000 budget.

47. Question: Are AWS hosting costs included in the contract budget or paid separately?

• Answer: Boulder County maintains the billing relationship with AWS as well as all plugins, themes, and subscriptions, which are not included in the $175,000 budget.

48. Question: How much training is expected each year?

• Answer: Training is an as needed basis. Training is only required for custom-built solutions, new partnership websites, and changes to existing workflow or other procedural changes.

49. Question: What level of documentation must be maintained?

• Answer: Code-level documentation is expected for all custom developed plugins, themes, or applications built by the vendor. System level documentation is expected during the rollout of a new system or change to an existing process. Ongoing maintenance of this documentation will be agreed upon between the vendor and Boulder County.

50. Question: Are there required response-time/SLA targets?

• Answer: Please include your proposed support structure that your organization is comfortable with and capable of supporting. Boulder County IT takes the lead on all first level of support and the maintenance and support vendor is the next level of support escalation.

51. Question: How much after-hours support is expected?

• Answer: Election night support varies on the number of Elections in a given year, some years there are three elections (the main election in November and two primaries) and in other years there may be a single election. Election night support typically starts at 7 PM and runs through 12 AM, although the expectation is that if required the support would include the entire evening or 24 hours of support for Election day and the day after the election. After hours support and emergency support have been minimal and infrequent. So much so that we do not have these documented. Our current vendor does not charge us a different rate, so we cannot validate these occurrences against our billing. Resolution of issues resulted in a matter of hours at most.

52. Question: Which accessibility responsibilities stay with Boulder County or another vendor?

• Answer: Boulder County has subscriptions to Siteimprove for daily accessibility scans as well as a monthly subscription to Siteimprove’s Manual Testing as a Service that provides specific page audits. The awarded vendor is expected to assist with implementation of accessibility issues identified using these tools/services. No additional audits are needed from the vendor.

53. Question: Are large projects always quoted separately?

• Answer: Not always. Our current maintenance and support contract allows for flexibility, but Boulder County’s desire is to have a more structured approach to our ongoing maintenance and support. Preference is given to proposals that include a pricing structure beyond just a time and materials model.

54. Question: Is there an expected monthly hour commitment or workload?

• Answer: No, our current budget is set as a not-to-exceed limit of $175,000. Ongoing needs vary from month to month.

55. Question: Are all 11 sites actively maintained at the same level?

• Answer: There are three unofficial tiers of support for our websites: top tier is bouldercounty.gov, second tier is boulderodm.gov, and third tier is all partnership sites and RedCAP. Formal documentation of a Service Level Agreement (SLA) has not been created.

56. Question: For this engagement, are you envisioning a fixed-scope retainer, a bank of hours, or another engagement structure?

• Answer: All options are acceptable.

57. Question: Does the annual budget include AWS hosting and related platform costs, or is it intended primarily for development, maintenance, and support services?

• Answer: Boulder County maintains the billing relationship with AWS as well as all plugins, themes, and subscriptions, which are not included in in the $175,000 budget.

58. Question: Could you share any significant projects, initiatives, or anticipated needs on the horizon for the next 12–24 months? Understanding those priorities would help us propose the right support model for the portfolio.

• Answer: Boulder County recently completed a project to refresh our bouldercounty.gov website.

This includes new information architecture, new design, and new page templates. This project would be presented as a separate RFP. Website accessibility is an ongoing focus for our team.

59. Question: Please confirm the name of the current incumbent vendor and whether this information may be publicly disclosed.

• Answer: Insight Designs Web Solutions is our current vendor.

60. Question: Can the County share the current contract scope or identify which services are currently provided by the incumbent?

• Answer: The current vendor performs all functions and responsibilities outlined in this RFP, with specifics outlined in the Statement of Work.

61. Question: Is the current $175,000 annual Not-to-Exceed amount primarily used for managed support, enhancements, or both?

• Answer: Both.

62. Question: Is the $175,000 annual amount a fixed budget ceiling, or may the contract amount vary by year based on approved task orders?

• Answer: The not-to-exceed amount is our annual budget. Should the need arise to spend more than that amount, there will be a contract amendment that would need to be signed by both the vendor and Boulder County.

63. Question: Can the County provide an estimated annual volume of support requests, enhancement projects, or development hours?

• Answer: Boulder County has met or exceeded our annual not-to-exceed budget for the past three years. The breakdown of hours is not distinguishable as our current vendor bills for time and materials exclusively.

64. Question: What information will typically be included in a task order, such as scope, timeline, acceptance criteria, and budget?

• Answer: There are typically two types of requests sent to our current vendor: larger project or enhancement and simpler task-based requests. Larger projects/enhancements sometimes come with documented requirements and asked for a fixed bid effort. Our current vendor charges for time and materials, which results in ongoing communication and project management of completed tasks.

65. Question: What is the expected approval process and typical turnaround time for issuing task orders?

• Answer: Boulder County will identify specific individuals to approve work requests with the vendor. Tasks will be tracked on a shared spreadsheet or tool for monitoring. Vendor will have access to Boulder County’s internal Teams environment for collaboration and communication.

Larger enhancements or projects will vary based on the vendor’s proposed pricing structure.

66. Question: Does the County anticipate any minimum annual level of work or support utilization under the contract?

• Answer: Workloads and tasks will vary from year to year with no minimum level of support expected. This is open to negotiation based on the vendor’s proposed pricing structure.

67. Question: Please confirm the anticipated initial contract term and any renewal or extension options.

• Answer: The County intends to award an initial one-year contract with the option to renew for up to four additional one-year terms, at the County’s sole discretion.

68. Question: Is there a maximum page limit or recommended length for the technical proposal?

• Answer: There are no specific requirements for the proposal.

69. Question: Are there specific formatting requirements for the proposal, including font size, margins, or file format?

• Answer: There are no specific requirements for the proposal.

70. Question: May vendors include appendices for resumes, case studies, certifications, and technical capability matrices?

• Answer: Yes.

71. Question: Could the County confirm the complete list of documents, forms, attachments, and deliverables required with the RFP response?

• Answer: There are no specific requirements for the proposal.

72. Question: Should vendors submit a signed or acknowledged copy of the Sample Services Contract with the proposal?

• Answer: No.

73. Question: If vendors have contract exceptions or requested revisions, should they be identified during proposal submission or after selection?

• Answer: Submit with your proposal.

74. Question: How many points are allocated specifically to proposed pricing versus technical qualifications and project approach?

• Answer: Technical qualifications outweigh proposed pricing.

75. Question: Are dedicated evaluation points assigned to preferred areas such as Web Accessibility, UX/UI Design, and Information Architecture, and how are they weighted?

• Answer: Not specifically. Our evaluation criteria takes into account all aspects of the RFP and the proposed vendor’s ability to meet our requirements.

76. Question: How will experience supporting high-volume and scalable applications such as Election Night Reporting and REDCap be evaluated?

• Answer: Proposals are encouraged to include highlights of past work that are representative of custom software development and implementation of commercial applications. Describing your examples with specifics regarding volume, scalability, and other criteria will assist our team in the evaluation process.

77. Question: Will the award be based solely on written proposals, or will shortlisted vendors participate in interviews, presentations, or demonstrations?

• Answer: Boulder County expects to invite a group of finalists to participate in interviews with presentations and the possibility of a demonstration.

78. Question: If interviews or demonstrations are conducted, what criteria or ranking will determine which vendors are shortlisted?

• Answer: Initial ranking of submissions will be based on their written proposals. Finalists will then be invited to participate in the next appropriate stage, likely interviews with presentations.

79. Question: Will interviews or demonstrations be separately scored, or used only to validate the written proposal before final selection?

• Answer: Final selection will include the comprehensive evaluation of their written proposal and whatever additional information is gathered from interviews, presentations, or demonstrations.

80. Question: If shortlisted, will vendors be required to provide technical demonstrations such as deployments, AWS problem-solving, or WordPress architecture walkthroughs?

• Answer: This is to be determined, but highly likely.

81. Question: How will alternative pricing models such as managed retainers, sprint capacity, or milestone-based pricing be evaluated against traditional hourly rate submissions?

• Answer: Preference will be given to pricing structures beyond the traditional hourly rate.

82. Question: Will pricing be scored primarily based on lowest cost, or based on overall value and scope coverage within the $175,000 annual budget limit?

• Answer: Overall value. Boulder County is looking for pricing structure that helps to ensure that work is completed successfully on the first attempt and that iteration is not a means to drain our funds with unnecessary hours and accountability.

83. Question: May vendors submit a primary pricing model with optional or tiered pricing for enhancements and additional services?

• Answer: Yes.

84. Question: Will proposals that include structured discovery, backlog refinement, and requirements validation approaches receive additional consideration?

• Answer: Yes.

85. Question: Are specific SLA response and resolution targets defined, or should vendors propose their own SLA framework?

• Answer: Boulder County IT provides the first level of support for all websites. Vendor SLAs should incorporate their SLA response with this consideration.

86. Question: What standard business hours should vendors assume for routine support coverage?

• Answer: Boulder County business hours are 8 AM to 5 PM, Monday through Friday.

87. Question: What level of after-hours or emergency support is expected, and should associated rates be included in the proposal?

• Answer: Election night support varies on the number of Elections in a given year, some years there are three elections (the main election in November and two primaries) and in other years there may be a single election. Election night support typically starts at 7 PM and runs through 12 AM, although the expectation is that if required the support would include the entire evening or 24 hours of support for Election day and the day after the election. After hours support and emergency support have been minimal and infrequent. So much so that we do not have these documented. Our current vendor does not charge us a different rate, so we cannot validate these occurrences against our billing. Resolution of issues resulted in a matter of hours at most. After hour rates are based on the vendor’s pricing structure.

88. Question: Does the County use defined incident severity levels for critical, high, medium, and low priority issues?

• Answer: These incident severity levels have been used at times in the past, but not necessarily on a daily basis. Boulder County is open to using this structure for our maintenance and support issues.

89. Question: Are there specific website or infrastructure availability targets that vendors are expected to meet?

• Answer: Not specifically. Boulder County maintains the hosting performance and scalability requirements. The vendor is an additional support partner with these goals. Specific guidelines and targets will be a collaborative goal setting practice between Boulder County and our maintenance and support vendor.

90. Question: Does the County currently use specific monitoring, alerting, logging, or incident management tools that the vendor must support?

• Answer: Yes. The vendor will be provided access to these tools/services with the option to influence the adoption of alternative tools/services.

91. Question: What metrics and reporting frequency does the County expect for website performance reports?

• Answer: Boulder County monitors uptime and performance of our websites 24/7 with alerting and notification coming to our dedicated team as well as our maintenance and support vendor.

Boulder County is expected to lead the response to issues and escalate response to our vendor as need.

92. Question: What uptime, downtime, outage, and incident metrics should be included in availability reports?

• Answer: Boulder County monitors uptime and performance of our websites 24/7 with alerting and notification coming to our dedicated team as well as our maintenance and support vendor.

Boulder County is expected to lead the response to issues and escalate response to our vendor as need.

93. Question: Does the County expect regular security, vulnerability, patching, or incident reports in addition to performance reporting?

• Answer: No.

94. Question: How frequently should AWS infrastructure assessments and cost optimization recommendations be delivered?

• Answer: Annually.

95. Question: Is there an expected timeline or required deliverable format for the initial assessment of the existing environment?

• Answer: Within the first three months and deliverable should be in a written format.

96. Question: Will the selected vendor receive direct administrative access to AWS, or will access be controlled through County IT processes?

• Answer: Awarded vendor will receive the minimum required permissions and access to complete their work and support.

97. Question: Can the County provide current AWS architecture documentation or an inventory of the services managed under this contract?

• Answer: This documentation will be provided to the awarded vendor.

98. Question: Will the vendor be authorized to purchase Reserved Instances directly, or only provide recommendations to the County?

• Answer: Boulder County will manage all billing and purchases for services, tools and subscriptions.

99. Question: Will the vendor be authorized to purchase Reserved Instances directly, or only provide recommendations to the County?

• Answer: Boulder County will manage all billing and purchases for services, tools and subscriptions.

100. Question: Are current backup, retention, RPO, and RTO requirements available for the WordPress and AWS environments?

• Answer: This documentation will be provided to the awarded vendor.

101. Question: What criteria will be used to evaluate proposed backup, disaster recovery, and RPO/RTO strategies for the AWS environment?

• Answer: This documentation will be provided to the awarded vendor.

102. Question: Can the County confirm whether all 11 websites operate within a single WordPress Multisite environment or multiple installations?

• Answer: There are multiple installations.

103. Question: Could the County provide a list of the 11 public-facing websites included in the current scope, along with their primary purpose or technology environment?

• Answer: Boulder County’s websites:

i) Boulder County (https://bouldercounty.gov) – 4234 pages, 4.1 million visits, 7.3 million pageviews in 2025

ii) Boulder Office of Disaster Management (https://boulderODM.gov) – 1416 pages

iii) Sport Shooting Partners (https://sportshootingpartners.org) – 9 pages, 20k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

iv) Wildfire Partners (https://wildfirepartners.org) – 99 pages, 111k visits, 188k pageviews in https://bouldercounty.gov/ https://boulderodm.gov/ https://sportshootingpartners.org/ https://wildfirepartners.org/

v) Boulder County Impact (https://bouldercountyimpact.org) – 1 page

vi) Pace Partners (https://pacepartners.com) – 42 pages, 12k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

vii) Energy Smart YES (https://energysmartyes.com) – 45 pages, 40k visits, 65k pageviews in

viii) Boco Suma (https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp) - 2 pages

ix) Boulder Incident Management Team (https://imt.bouldercounty.gov) – 6 pages, 327 visits, 599 pageviews in 2025

x) WellMind Connection (https://wellmindconnection.org) – 13 pages, 11k visits, 16k pageviews in 2025

xi) Rebuilding Better (https://rebuildingbetter.org) – under construction

104. Question: Could the County provide an approximate number of pages or content items across the 11 public-facing websites to help vendors understand the overall scale?

• Answer: Boulder County’s websites:

i) Boulder County (https://bouldercounty.gov) – 4234 pages, 4.1 million visits, 7.3 million pageviews in 2025

ii) Boulder Office of Disaster Management (https://boulderODM.gov) – 1416 pages

iii) Sport Shooting Partners (https://sportshootingpartners.org) – 9 pages, 20k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

iv) Wildfire Partners (https://wildfirepartners.org) – 99 pages, 111k visits, 188k pageviews in

v) Boulder County Impact (https://bouldercountyimpact.org) – 1 page

vi) Pace Partners (https://pacepartners.com) – 42 pages, 12k visits, 21k pageviews in 2025

vii) Energy Smart YES (https://energysmartyes.com) – 45 pages, 40k visits, 65k pageviews in

viii) Boco Suma (https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp) - 2 pages https://bouldercountyimpact.org/ https://pacepartners.com/ https://energysmartyes.com/ https://bocosuma.com/en https://bocosuma.com/sp https://imt.bouldercounty.gov/ https://wellmindconnection.org/ https://rebuildingbetter.org/ https://bouldercounty.gov/ https://boulderodm.gov/ https://sportshootingpartners.org/ https://wildfirepartners.org/ https://bouldercountyimpact.org/ https://pacepartners.com/ https://energysmartyes.com/

x) WellMind Connection (https://wellmindconnection.org) – 13 pages, 11k visits, 16k pageviews in 2025

xi) Rebuilding Better (https://rebuildingbetter.org) – under construction

105. Question: Are all websites currently on the same WordPress and PHP versions, or do environments vary across sites?

• Answer: This documentation will be provided to the awarded vendor.

106. Question: Can the County provide a high-level inventory or documentation of the existing custom plugins and their business functions?

• Answer: The following are the list of custom plugins:

i) PublishPress Revisions

ii) Active Directory Login

iii) Autocomplete search for admin menu

iv) Hiding approve button within PublishPress

v) Clear cache and new page tag removal

vi) Display PublishPress editorial comments

vii) Allow Revisers to publish within PublishPress

viii) Enable media replace

ix) Future publish within PublishPress in 12 o’clock format

x) Modify Revisor Edit Page within PublishPress

xi) Move editorial comments to top within PublishPress

xii) Change new page revisions within PublishPress https://imt.bouldercounty.gov/

xiii) News import from GovDelivery or an equivalent news feed source using an RSS feed

xiv) Redirect on decline from previews within PublishPress

xv) Restrict revisor view within PublishPress

xvi) Revision approved email send within PublishPress

xvii) Revision declined email send within PublishPress

xviii) Revision queue filter within PublishPress

xix) Revision restore override within PublishPress

xx) Revision submitted email send within PublishPress

xxi) Revision count visible within PublishPress

xxii) Add custom templates to Visual Composer editor

107. Question: Besides GovDelivery, are there other critical third-party integrations the selected vendor will be responsible for maintaining?

• Answer: There are integrations with forms and Salesforce that occasionally need attention.

Additionally, customizations of plugins and coordination of plugin authors is occasionally needed.

108. Question: What evidence or technical documentation should vendors provide to demonstrate capability in supporting AWS-hosted applications such as REDCap and Election Night Reporting?

• Answer: Proposals are encouraged to include highlights of past work that are representative of custom software development and implementation of commercial applications. Describing your examples with specifics regarding requirements, volume, scalability, and other criteria will assist our team in the evaluation process.

109. Question: What environments are currently available for development, testing, staging, and production deployments?

• Answer: Boulder County maintains a local development environment, sandbox, development, staging, and production environments.

110. Question: Are Beanstalkapp, DeployBot, and Trello mandatory, or can equivalent enterprise tools such as GitHub Actions, GitLab CI/CD, or Jira achieve full evaluation points?

• Answer: Yes, our current set of tools are mandatory up and until any replacement tool/service is fully adopted. Vendor recommendations are encouraged along with guidance and training for the adopted tools/services.

111. Question: What County approval and change management process applies before production deployments?

• Answer: Boulder County has two levels of changes before anything is moved into production.

Standard changes must be submitted, reviewed and approved by our Change Management Review Board that meets on a weekly basis. Most of these changes are managed and submitted in a monthly sprint cycle. The other types of change is an Emergency change, like a security patch or production issue requiring urgent changes. These changes require an IT Management approval.

112. Question: What peak traffic volumes or performance expectations should vendors consider for Election Night Reporting and other high-demand events?

• Answer: Boulder County considers the week before and the week after an election to be peak volume and places the website under a blackout period for routine enhancement/changes. The other peak timeframe is during a natural disaster like a flood or wildfire.

113. Question: Please clarify the expected REDCap support scope, including whether it covers only AWS infrastructure or also application administration, upgrades, and integrations.

• Answer: REDCap support consists primarily of AWS support.