9-Attachment 3. RFP Information and Schedule.pdf

I. INTRODUCTION

The City is seeking proposals from firms experienced with providing maintenance, repair and related services for a fleet with a wide variety of vehicles and equipment such as police patrol units, vans and pickup trucks, fire apparatus, and construction equipment.

II. BACKGROUND

The City operates an extremely diverse fleet of approximately 1,295 units, ranging from sedans, on and off-road vehicles, earthmoving and construction equipment, patrol cars to fire-fighting apparatus. Some of these units are maintained by the Parks Department, and some specialized equipment is outsourced.

The new contractor will be responsible for providing fleet maintenance and repair services to approximately 905 units covered by the Target services portion of the services provide to the City. The remaining vehicles may or may not require Non-Target services. Attachment F contains a list of vehicles in the fleet. For reference, the City’s costs for Non-Target services ranged from approximately $2,100,000 to $3,400,000 during the period of fiscal years 2021-2025.

The Parks Department also maintains riding mowers, carts, and other landscape equipment with its own personnel. Any occasional services that the contractor is requested to perform on Parks’ landscape equipment will be treated as Non-Target activities, as defined hereinafter. The City’s Fleet Manager will manage and oversee the outsourcing of body repair work due to accidents as well as some repairs to specialized equipment such as jet/vac equipment and camera trucks.

Overall services provided by the City’s Fleet Services Division include vehicle specification, procurement, and disposal; vehicle preparation (make-ready); preventive maintenance; remedial repairs; repairs necessitated by accident or physical damage; tire services; towing; motor pool services; fuel site management and maintenance; and other administrative services required to assure the effective and economical operation of the City’s fleet.

III. OBJECTIVES

Fleet Maintenance is a highly important internal service for the City. These services:

• Impact the cost of nearly every City service;

• Impact the productivity of nearly every City employee;

• Support emergency services securing the safety of our community; and

• Support maintenance of the City infrastructure that makes possible a thriving economy and quality of life.

Therefore, the City will only deem responsive proposals from those firms that can clearly demonstrate that they meet or exceed the minimum qualifications in terms of experience, technical expertise, and financial capacity as detailed in this RFP.

The major goals of this solicitation are to develop an optimized vehicle maintenance model that will:

INTRODUCTION

• Provide an industry standard level of fleet maintenance services to City departments to support the effective delivery of municipal services to the residents of Arlington;

• Provide high quality fleet maintenance services and products;

• Provide the most competitive prices available while balancing the achievement of the above goals; and

• Promote safety in operations.

Specific objectives of the optimized vehicle maintenance program include:

• Ensure that all City vehicles and equipment remain safe, reliable and function effectively, with a minimum amount of down time;

• Accomplish all maintenance and repair actions with maximum productivity and quality of work, with the minimum use of labor, parts and materials;

• Provide timely, responsive and efficient repairs, including a "quick fix" (defined later in this document) service at minimal cost;

• Minimize overall repair costs by aggressively identifying repairs covered by manufacturer or supplier warranties;

• Conduct a preventive maintenance program to:

o Minimize overall maintenance and repair costs and lengthen the life of vehicles due to systematic care;

o Maximize vehicle availability and minimize the incidents of equipment breakdowns;

o Minimize the need for spare, reserve, or backup equipment;

o Ensure State mandated safety and emissions requirements are met;

o Provide services in a manner that minimizes inconvenience to departments and promotes a high rate of compliance with service schedules.

• Purchase quality parts at the least possible cost;

• Minimize downtime by stocking the proper types and quantities of parts at the most advantageous locations, while maintaining the inventory at the most economical level;

• Minimize the waste stream due to maintenance and repair activities; and

• Improve the quality of data and availability of information to support better management decisions regarding the size of the City’s fleet, the types of vehicles purchased in the future, replacement cycles, and other important fleet management considerations.

Respondents must incorporate these goals and objectives into their plans for providing services to the City and into their cost proposal.

IV. SUMMARY OF RESPONSIBILITIES OF THE SELECTED CONTRACTOR

The successful contractor will be responsible for providing all of the services described in the subsequent sections of this RFP, and in accordance with the standards of performance outlined therein, for all vehicles identified in Attachment F to this RFP. In summary, the successful contractor will be responsible for:

• The provision of all fleet maintenance and repair services to the identified fleet of vehicles and related equipment. It is expected that the successful contractor will use City-owned facilities and its own personnel to provide these services. The City will allow the use of sub-contracted services to the extent that these services (1) reduce overall fleet costs, (2) lower overall fleet downtime, (3) do not adversely affect service quality, and

(4) do not shift accountability for service provision from the successful contractor (note that the City expects that certain repairs will be outsourced by the successful contractor such as: services to specialized equipment and repair services that require highly technical skills).

• The provision of all labor, materials, sub-contractor services, administrative services, and supervision to meet the requirements of these specifications and the objectives enumerated above.

• The provision of technical assistance and guidance as requested to support the City’s fleet management decisions regarding fleet size and composition, fleet policy formulation, fleet specifications/standardization, and capital investments in the fleet and fleet facilities.

• Coordination of vehicle disposal and auction sales across all City departments.

• Monitoring of fuel levels, acceptance and verification of fuel deliveries, transmittal of all required delivery paperwork; under City staff direction, the management of the City’s fueling authorization software, processes; and the maintenance and repair of the City’s fueling equipment.

• Acceptance of new vehicles into service and processing of required paperwork.

• The provision of these services during all City declared emergency situations such as storms, flood, and other natural and man-made emergencies on a 24 hour a day basis as required.

Certain management responsibilities are excluded from the scope of services. These responsibilities will be retained by the Fleet Services Division, which will remain ultimately responsible for the delivery of all fleet services within the City.

The functions to be retained include, but may not be limited to:

• fleet policy development

• fleet sizing

• vehicle specification development and procurement with input from Contractor

• management of accident and physical damage repairs

• setting service standards, vehicle replacement planning, and programming with input from Contractor

• fleet services budgeting and customer billing/charge backs

• analytical studies

• fuel procurement

• grant funding compliance

• overall management information, administration, and reporting.

The City Fire Department has responsibility for all make ready and acceptance of Fire Department apparatus.

V. AGREEMENT

It is anticipated that the successful contractor shall commence performance of services under the terms of this RFP within Ninety (90) days of approval by the Mayor and City Council, or October 1, 2026, whichever is later.

The term of the initial contract shall be a period of three (3) years from the start of work under this contract.

The City and contractor may, upon mutual written consent, extend the contract for four (4) additional one-year periods after the initial term. Contractor may request an annual price increase at this time at a rate not to exceed the effective percentage change in the consumer price index (CPI) for the specific contract for the previous twelve (12) months.

At the City’s discretion, the effective change rate shall be based on either the local or national index average rate for all items. If agreement cannot be reached, the contract will be terminated at the end of the current contract period or within 120 days, whichever is longer. The City will accept price reductions at any time during the contract period.

If the City exercises the renewal option, the target budget for each renewal year will be limited to the target budget incurred in the previous year, inflated by the effective percentage change in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) as noted above, and any other agreed upon changes (i.e. changes in fleet size).

The contract under which these services are to be procured will be a term agreement, with payment made monthly.

In the event that a new Contractor is not selected by the City, subsequent to this contract, it shall be incumbent upon the Contractor to continue the contract under the same terms and conditions until new contracts can be completely operational. At no time shall this transition period extend more than ninety (90) days beyond the original expiration date of the existing contract and any extension thereof.

VI. CONTRACTOR PERSONNEL

The Contractor agrees that said Contractor and all personnel assigned to work under this contract are independent contractors and not employees or agents of the City. Nothing in this proposal shall be construed as creating a partnership, agency, joint venture or other similar relationship between the City and the Contractor.

The Contractor agrees that it will not represent to anyone its relationship with the City is other than that of an independent contractor. The Contractor will be solely responsible for its own acts and omissions and those of its employees, officers, agents, and subcontractors.

I. Requests for Proposal (RFP)

The RFP is not a bid. In the event the City elects to negotiate a contract with the successful responsive vendor, any contract shall contain, at a minimum, the terms and conditions for as listed in the RFP. The City reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to reject all submissions, reissue a subsequent RFP, terminate, restructure, or amend this procurement process at any time. The final selection and contract negotiation rests solely with the City. No direct or indirect contact with the Mayor of the City of Arlington or City Council members will be allowed. If such contact is made, the City reserves the right to reject the proposal.

II. Procurement Schedule

The following dates are set forth for informational and planning purposes; however, the City reserves the right to change the dates.

III. Pre-Proposal Meeting and Tour

All Vendors are highly encouraged to attend the pre-proposal conference. A Pre-Bid Conference will be held virtually, through Microsoft Teams.

1. The purpose of the pre-proposal meeting is for City Staff to review the specifications and expectations of the contract with vendors.

2. A tour of the fleet shop will be conducted following the conference. Vendors are encouraged to prepare and submit their questions in writing four (4) calendar days in advance of the Pre-Bid Conference to expedite the proceedings. City’s responses to questions received by this due date may be distributed at the Pre-Bid Conference.

3. Any oral responses provided by City staff at the Pre-Proposal Conference shall be preliminary. A written summary of the Pre-Proposal Conference shall contain official responses, if any. Any oral response given at the Pre-Proposal Conference that is not confirmed in the written summary of the Pre-Proposal Conference or by a subsequent addendum shall not be official or binding on the City. Only written responses shall be official and all other forms of communication with any officer, employee or agent of the City shall not be binding on the City.

RFP is advertised February 25, 2026 Pre-Proposal Conference & Tour of Facilities March 10, 2026 Deadline for Questions from vendors March 12, 2026 @ 2:00pm Addendum Released (If Needed) March 19, 2026 Proposals Due 4 weeks March 26, 2026 @ 2:00pm Proposals Distributed to Evaluation Committee April 2, 2026 Vendor interviews with committee (if needed); ranking of vendors April 27, 2026 Contract Negotiations begins with highest ranked vendor May 4, 2026 Council Approval June 23, 2026 Contract start date October 1, 2026

RFP INFORMATION AND SCHEDULE

4. Questions asked at the conference that cannot be adequately answered during the conference may be deferred. Although the City may provide tentative responses to questions at the conference, responses are not official until they are posted as an addendum to this RFP.