Addendum 1.docx
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- Attached to
- UW MEDICINE BIOETHICS AND HUMANITIES
- Solicitation number
- 752812
- Issued by
- King County, Kingston CDP, Washington
About this file
This document is an Addendum to a Request for Proposals (RFP) issued by the University of Washington (UW) for the UW Medicine Department of Bioethics and Humanities to procure a web development consulting company to redesign and redevelop their existing website. The RFP seeks a contractor to provide services including information gathering, content strategy development, site design and architecture, content migration, training, and ongoing technical/functional support. The project is expected to be completed in three phases over approximately 15 months, with the initial messaging, design, and content generation work to be completed within 6-7 months. The RFP provides details on the scope of work, schedule constraints, and evaluation criteria, including a 20% weight on the bidder's prior experience working within the UW IT environment.
The RFP states the available budget is $45,000, and proposals exceeding this amount may still be considered if the contractor can scale the scope accordingly. The website is currently hosted by UW IT, and the new site could be hosted either by UW IT or the selected contractor. The RFP encourages bidders to provide details on any external hosting and maintenance costs. The new website must meet all applicable UW and School of Medicine security and design standards.
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Addendum #1 November 15, 2024
RFP 752812
UW MEDICINE BIOETHICS AND HUMANITIES
This addendum #1 is issued to upload the answers for the questions received. Please find it below and also along with the RFP documents.
Sincerely, Silvia Andersen RFP Coordinator image1.emf
Question and Answers.xlsx Sheet1
Attachment H
RFQ # 752812 UW MEDICINE BIOETHICS AND HUMANITIES
RFP Questions
Section # Section Title Paragraph Question UW Response
| 2.1 | Scope of Work | 1 | Does UW Medicine Bioethics & Humanities have any existing branding and/or messaging guidelines they anticipate using or continuing to use for the new site? |
| Yes, UW branding guidelines will be used. |
2.1 Scope of Work 2 How many pages does the current site have? The current site can be viewed at https://depts.washington.edu/bhdept/. The URL was intended to be included in the project description. We apologize for the oversight.
2.1 Scope of Work 2 How was the 12-page template scope determined? Do you have examples of the templates you have in mind based on your existing site content or content models? 12 was used as our working estimate based on the current site and anticipated content changes. We do not have example templates.
2.1 Scope of Work 2 How much new content do you currently anticipate being generated for the new site? How much revision of existing content do you currently anticipate being required to fulfill the new messaging approach? Approximately 25%-30% new content from messaging work and the balance from existing content.
2.1 Scope of Work 2 What, if any, SEO work has been conducted for the website so far? Do not know - unaware of any from the past 2 years ago.
2.1 Scope of Work 2 Will UW staff be available to assist in migrating Drupal content to the new site? If yes, roughly what percentage of content do you anticipate will be migrated by UW staff versus vendor? Yes, provided that there is support and training to learn how to do so.
2.1 Scope of Work 2 For vendor-sourced photos, do you anticipate these will be stock photos? Or do you envision a photoshoot/shoots will be required? stock photos and/or photos from UW image catalog will be used - no photoshoots are expected under this project.
2.1 Scope of Work 2 How many website admins / content editors will be maintaining and updating the new site? no staff in the department are fully dedicated to website maintenance/upkeep. Roughly 4 different program managers will be maintaining content moving forward.
2.1 Is there currently an incumbent that is bidding on the project as well? we cannot be sure who is bidding on this project until the solicitation period closes.
3.2 Is there any flexibility with the $45k budget? Will a proposal still be considered if it exceeds this budget? if a bidder determines they cannot meet the requested scope of work within the stated budget then they should scale their proposal to show what they can accomplished within the total amount stated.
2.1 What does the hosting situation look like currently? hosted by UWIT
2.1 Will the URL remain as https://depts.washington.edu/bhdept/ethics-medicine ? that will depend if it is hosted within or external to UW
1 Pre build information gathering and messaging work The contractor will meet online with department leadership and selected department stakeholders to solicit input on shared priorities for the design and functionality of a new site. How many department stakeholders will be part of the team? up to 10 with a core project implementation group of approximately 3 department staff/leaders.
1 Pre build information gathering and messaging work Based on this input, the contractor will generate at least 2 overall site design and messaging approaches (as reflected in the site’s proposed architecture) to share with department leadership. The Department Chair and Administrator will be responsible for making the final decision before building out the site. Is there already a proposed architecture in place or would we be making that recommendation? there is a rough main-level architecture we are envisioning . We would expect to refine and build this out with the contractor's guidance.
2 Site Design, Build and Launch – The contractor is responsible for: Migrating Drupal content from the department’s current site into their respective templates on WordPress (where content will be reused). Will there be additional content that does not currently live on the site added to it? See above.
| 2 | Site Design, Build and Launch – The contractor is responsible for: | Editing client provided photos and/or source photos on the client’s behalf to be used on the site. |
| Do you have an idea what type of photos and how many you might need edited for the new site? | not known and see above |
| 3 | Functional, Technical and Performance | |
| The site must be developed with SEO-friendly code, including on-page SEO features. | Would you like to utilize the Yoast SEO plugin for WordPress? | unknown |
| 3 | Functional, Technical and Performance | |
| The site should be capable of including a UW Net ID integrated sign-in through WordPress to offer a password protected portion of the website; and/or the site should integrate with UW Departmental SharePoint sites, for file sharing. | Is this the correct documentation for SSO https://itconnect.uw.edu/tools-services-support/access-authentication/sso/ that we would be utilizing? | That it the guidance provided by UWIT regarding SSO tools/support. This project must meet all applicable UWIT security standards. |
| 3 | Functional, Technical and Performance |
| The new site could be hosted by UW IT or by the Contractor. |
Any costs for external hosting and maintenance should be delineated in the proposal.
If hosting is proposed through UW IT, the contractor must clearly demonstrate their capacity to work within the UW IT systems’ constraints. Is this the correct documentation for web hosting https://www.washington.edu/docs/references/web-hosting-options/ that we should follow? That is the guidance provided by UWIT for webhosting. This project must meet all applicable UWIT security standards.
| 3 | Functional, Technical and Performance |
| Quantify the effort assumptions and provide unit rates should the project require more than originally estimated. |
Number of hours:
included in the bid for messaging and branding/design work & unit rate for additional time.
included in the bid for new content generation and / or copyediting work & unit rate for additional time.
for staff training and documentation included in the bid & unit rate for additional training time or resources of go live support included in the bid and unit rate for additional time Is an hourly rate for each of these services sufficient or do you need a ballpark range? As stated, please quantify the effort/time assumptions included in your bid and provide unit rates should the project require more than originally estimated.
| 3 | Functional, Technical and Performance | |
| Number of custom graphics or icons included in the bid & unit rate for additional graphics | This is a bit hard to quantify since we haven't designed the new site yet, do you just need a ballpark range? | a range is acceptable so long as it is clear what the range would cover -- i.e. - $X - $X cost to develop X# of new icons/ graphics. Additional icons/graphics could be developed and billed at a rate of $X/hour. |
2 SCHEDULE CONSTRAINTS Phase 1 - The messaging development, site design and content generation phases should be complete within 6-7 months of the start date (goal is to complete this phase by the end of June 2025).
Phase 2 - Data migration, staff training to complete new content uploads, and the new site testing phase should be completed within 6 months of the end of Phase 1 (ideally by December 2025).
Phase 3 –Site go live and additional staff training by the end of the March 2026 Is there a reason that a site of this small scale will take The question is not completely formulated.
| 2 | EVALUATION CRITERIA & SCORING | Metric: Depth of prior experience developing websites for other UW departments and working within the UW IT security environment as an external entity. | |
| Weight: 20% | Is this a fair scoring criteria? 20% is a fairly large amount and seems to make this more of a closed door RFP to vendors who have worked with the UW in the past. Do we even stand a chance at winning with criteria like this in place? We have extensive experience working in highly regulated data environments (healthcare, ecommerce, fintech). | The weight of this metric is due to a lack of staffing and expertise within the department's team to guide an external contractor through the complex, multi-layered UW IT internal environment. Direct prior UW experience would greatly alleviate a burden that otherwise falls on the department's team to facilitate. Bidders with closely related expertise in other regulated environments will still be fully and fairly evaluated against all criteria. |
2 2.1 SCOPE OF WORK Assisting with new content generation and copywriting, as requested. How much copywriting (measured in pages) do you anticipate during the content migration portion of the project? see above
2 2.1 SCOPE OF WORK Assisting with new content generation and copywriting, as requested. Will copywriters need technical subject matter expertise? no.
2 2.1 SCOPE OF WORK The site must meet all University of Washington and School of Medicine Security requirements and be compatible with University of Washington design standards. Are University of Washington design standards documented? If so, where may we find these? yes, the UW brand guide will be provided to the winning bidder if they are not already familiar with the standards.
2 2.1 SCOPE OF WORK N/A The RFQ and attachments do not mention specific analytics or reporting requirements. What are the expectations for the new website in terms of privacy (cookie management, GDPR, CCPA) and analytics? Privacy considerations will follow best practice and UW IT standards. Analytics/reporting is expected to be simple, i.e. site traffic data, etc.
2 2.1 SCOPE OF WORK The new site could be hosted by UW IT or by the Contractor. What is the current hosting situation of the Drupal website? see above
2 2.1 SCOPE OF WORK The new site could be hosted by UW IT or by the Contractor. Will the site remain at the address depts.washington.edu/department, or will it be possible to host the site on an independent subdomain such as bhdept.washington.edu along the lines of other university departments? the site URL has not yet been decided apart from it remaining an [.edu] site.
| 1.21 | Funding | Any contract awarded as a result of this procurement is contingent upon the continued availability of state or federal agency funding. |
| What is the estimated budget allocated for this project? | As stated in the RFP, proposals should not exceed $45K. If additional funds prove necessary to obtain a viable product, the department may revise its budget accordingly. |
| 2.1 | SCOPE OF WORK | Migrating Drupal content from the department’s current site into their respective templates on WordPress (where content will be reused). |
| How many pages of content is expected to be migrated? Is there an existing archive of content that needs to be migrated to the new system? How will archived content be handled in the new CMS? | unknown. See above |
2.1 SCOPE OF WORK Any costs for external hosting and maintenance should be delineated in the proposal We understand maintenance of the new website is not part of the scope of the current RFP. Is there a possibility of extension of the contract for providing website maintenance to the selected vendor? potentially but unknown at this time.
| 2.1 | SCOPE OF WORK | If hosting is proposed through UW IT, the contractor must clearly demonstrate their capacity to work within the UW IT systems’ constraints. |
| Is there any specific hosting mechanism preferred by UW? | the department wants a hosting system that will be reliable and low cost. Hosting by UW is free so external hosting would need to provide other benefits to be worth paying for the service. |
| 2.1 | SCOPE OF WORK | Providing detailed training so that the department team knows how to easily upload new and maintain existing content. |
| How many staff members are anticipated to require training, and what is their current level of proficiency with website management tools? Will there be different levels of training for technical and non-technical staff? | We have no IT or "technical" staff in the department. We have a total of five program and administrative staff adding content to the current site on an as needed basis. All five will need training to work in the new WordPress site. |
| 2.1 | SCOPE OF WORK | The site must meet all University of Washington and School of Medicine Security requirements and be compatible with University of Washington design standards. |
| Are there specific security standards or certifications that the website must meet (e.g., ISO 27001, NIST)? | The site must meet all University of Washington and School of Medicine security requirements. If the selected bidder is unfamiliar with these standards, the information will be provided by the appropriate unit(s) within UWIT during the project period. |
| 2.1 | SCOPE OF WORK | The site should be capable of including a UW Net ID integrated sign-in through WordPress to offer a password protected portion of the website; and/or the site should integrate with UW Departmental SharePoint sites, for file sharing. |
| Can you provide a complete list of third-party integrations as a part of this project? | N/A |
2.1 SCOPE OF WORK The new site must be compatible and function as a redirect for the old site’s URL Are there any existing sub-domains or CRM on the current website that need to be incorporated into the new website redesign? unknown
2.1 SCOPE OF WORK The site must be optimized for fast performance and load times. What are the requirements for analytics and reporting? Are there specific metrics or KPIs that need to be tracked and reported? see above
2.1 SCOPE OF WORK Editing client provided photos and/or source photos on the client’s behalf to be used on the site. What is the expected volume of photos to be edited? see above
2.1 SCOPE OF THE WORK 2.Site Design, Build and Launch – The contractor is responsible for: The statement says "• Migrating Drupal content from the department’s current site into their respective templates on WordPress (where content will be reused)." Can you please provide the current website URL details? The current site URL was provided in the summary statement with this RFP. It is https://depts.washington.edu/bhdept/
2.1 SCOPE OF THE WORK 3. Functional, Technical and Performance Can you tell us where is the current website hosted? Will the new website be hosted in the same place. , please provide the configuration of the Current Host like Operating System, Amount of Storage, Number of CPU's , Amount of RAM. see above. We do not have the details about UW IT's web hosting configuration.
2.1 SCOPE OF THE WORK 3. Functional, Technical and Performance What is your current system security requirements , SEO Optimization, and compatibility? see above
2.1 SCOPE OF THE WORK 3. Functional, Technical and Performance Can you provide us single sign on NET ID specification? N/A - UWIT has specifications for single sign on and using Net IDs. They can be provided to the winning bidder as needed.
2.1 SCOPE OF THE WORK 3. Functional, Technical and Performance What type of integration of SharePoint site is required? Can you provide more details on that. ability to retrieve specific SharePoint files and forms directly from the password protected page on the new site.
3.2 EVALUATION CRITERIA & SCORING 5. Cost Effectiveness Unable to understand this statement "a. Metric: Total cost of the proposal relative to the budget of $45K" . Are you saying that the total budget cost is only 45K? yes, we will be evaluating proposals against this budget threshold and comparing what we could accomplish with different vendors at this funding level.
NA NA NA We have onshore offshore model, Can we utilize Offshore resources outside of United States? any external contracting that the bidder intends to rely on should be disclosed in the proposal/budget.
How strictly will the evaluation panel weigh prior experience with UW systems specifically compared to general web development experience? see above
2.1 Scope of Work Can you provide the current URL for your site? https://depts.washington.edu/bhdept/
2.1 Scope of Work Will all content on the current site move to the new site? see above
2.1 Scope of Work Will there be additional content and/or functionality needed on your new site? see above
2.1 Scope of Work What is driving the move from Drupal to WordPress? What new features and functionality do you want from WordPress? ease of use for a non technical team
2.1 Scope of Work Does the site follow UW branding guidelines only or is there a subset of guidelines specific to the UW Medicine Bioethics and Humanities department? UW branding will be the only guidelines we need to follow specifically.
2.1 Scope of Work The RFQ references a proposed architecture for the new site (pg7 question re: prebuild) - can we see this document? see above
2.1 Scope of Work Do you have a ballpark budget for this project? see above
2.1 Scope of Work Is there an incumbent consultant that will be bidding on the work? see above
2.1 Scope of Work Will we be able to review your analytics as part of our discovery phase of work? yes
2.1 Scope of Work Can you tell us the size of your team and review/approval process on your end? see above
2.1.3 Scope of Work: Functional, Technical and Performance How many pages are in the current site? see above
2.1.3 Scope of Work: Functional, Technical and Performance Will the content be migrated as-is, or will the content be updated/edited as part of the migration? some of the current content will need to be updated/edited either before or after migration.
2.1.3 Scope of Work: Functional, Technical and Performance Will you be able to provide backups (SQL dumps) of the current Drupal database? yes
2.1.3 Scope of Work: Functional, Technical and Performance Will the consultant have Administrator (UID #1) access to the current Drupal site? yes
2.1.1 SCOPE OF WORK Pre build information gathering and messaging work Are there any specific preferences for the design approach (e.g., minimalist, modern, data-driven)? unknown at this time
2.1.1 Pre build information gathering and messaging work Should the design proposals include wireframes or mock-ups, or are high-level design concepts sufficient? concepts are sufficient
2.1.2 SCOPE OF WORK Site Design, Build and Launch What is the total expected number of pages, apart from the 12-page templates? unknown
2.1.2 Site Design, Build and Launch Are there any specific templates that require complex functionality (e.g., dynamic content, interactive elements)? unknown but unlikely
2.1.2 Site Design, Build and Launch How many pages/content items need to be migrated from the existing Drupal site? see above
2.1.2 Site Design, Build and Launch Is there a need for content restructuring or just a direct migration? see above
2.1.2 Site Design, Build and Launch How much new content needs to be generated? Can you provide an estimate of the number of pages or word count? see above
2.1.2 Site Design, Build and Launch Will the department team be providing the initial draft, or are we expected to handle the copywriting entirely? The successful bidder will not be responsible for all copywriting or for generating all new content. Instead, they should expect to support the project team by reviewing and improving drafts, and in some cases, formulating an initial draft, especially for the primary pages conveying newly developed strategic messaging.
2.1.2 Site Design, Build and Launch How many photos are expected to be edited/sourced? Can you provide an estimated count? see above
2.1.2 Site Design, Build and Launch Are there specific SEO goals or targeted keywords already identified? see above
2.1.3 SCOPE OF WORK Functional, Technical and Performance Is there any requirement for ongoing SEO support after the site launch? unknown
2.1.3 Functional, Technical and Performance Can you provide detailed specifications or guidelines for the University of Washington and School of Medicine’s security requirements? see above
2.1.3 Functional, Technical and Performance Are there any specific SEO features that must be integrated (e.g., schema markup, structured data)? see above
2.1.3 Functional, Technical and Performance Will the SharePoint integration be used for file sharing only, or are there additional features required? It will serve as a user-friendly interface to access commonly used departmental forms, policy documents, etc.
2.1.3 Functional, Technical and Performance Are there any older browser versions that we need to support, or is it limited to the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge? We will expect the site to meet UW IT standards and generally accepted industry standards, as appropriate.
2.1.3 Functional, Technical and Performance Are there specific maintenance expectations after the site launch (e.g., updates, backups, security patches)? Please provide further details each bidder can include details of a potential ongoing maintenance contract
2.1.3 Functional, Technical and Performance Can you provide more brief of what the messaging function looks like and what are the detailed expectations with it? unknown
Functional, Technical and Performance Are there any third-party integrations or plugins expected that we need to account for in the estimate? see above
Functional, Technical and Performance Are there any specific accessibility requirements (e.g., WCAG compliance)? see above
Functional, Technical and Performance Will the department provide branding assets (logos, color schemes, fonts), or is that part of the scope? These design elements will follow UW brand guidelines and can be provided to the winning bidder as needed.
2.2 SCHEDULE CONSTRAINTS How many training sessions are expected? What is the preferred format (online, in-person, recorded)? the effectiveness of the training is what's important, not a specific length or format.
| 2.1(2) | Section II Requirements | Designing up to 12-page templates for the new site. | We understand that the site will leverage the UW branded WordPress theme. If more/less templates are required to fulfill the rollout of the site, is that acceptable? |
| unknown |
2.1(2) Section II Requirements Designing up to 12-page templates for the new site. Is there a requirement for the templates to be custom page templates? Or could we leverage started templates created for other UW websites? If we need to use custom templates/components/plugins that are paid/require licensing, is that acceptable? We assume any cost with WordPress would come directly from the license/contract UW has for building this new site, please confirm. using existing UW templates is certainly possible. Please submit your bid with assumptions about such variables outlined so we can fully understand your proposal.
2.1(2) Section II Requirements Uploading at least one page for each page template. Does this mean the whole site will not need to be migrated initially? Can/should we offer different levels of support when scoping? We see 8 sections, 20 primary landing pages and a lot more subpages within their current site. We'd like to consider economy of scale and provide a good/better/best pricing model based on the number of templates, pages that you need the external vendor to support with. We will not migrate the entire site directly. We expect approximately 75% of the current site to move over in some form. You are welcome to present your bid using whatever scoping framework you think would be helpful in our review.
2.1(2) Section II Requirements Migrating Drupal content from the department’s current site into their respective templates on WordPress (where content will be reused). Does the existing UW staff manage and maintain the Drupal content today? Would the winning agency receive user provisions to access the content? Or would we work alongside an existing team member to export data, configurations and structured modules? see above
2.1(2) Section II Requirements Migrating Drupal content from the department’s current site into their respective templates on WordPress (where content will be reused). Can you confirm content/website is English (US) only? Is there a need to consider localization? English only at this time.
2.1(2) Section II Requirements Migrating Drupal content from the department’s current site into their respective templates on WordPress (where content will be reused). We see the site has a login system in place . Will the gated pages be part of this migration? Are those pages contemplated within the 12 templates to designed/built? N/A
2.1(2) Section II Requirements Migrating Drupal content from the department’s current site into their respective templates on WordPress (where content will be reused). What was the business decision to move away from Drupal? Was there an issue or concern we should be aware of and address in our proposal? WordPress is more commonly used and considerably less complex for lay persons to manage. Current site requires rebuild so this was the time to also make the switch.
2.1(2) Section II Requirements Migrating Drupal content from the department’s current site into their respective templates on WordPress (where content will be reused). Is the current site functionality/ navigation / content going to remain mostly the same? Or is there an opportunity to run UX and UI audit of the current site to take learnings forward into the new website? If so, would we have access to historical performance/data analytics? we expect some functionality and navigation to change and improve. Also see above for the estimated balance of new vs old content. Any available data about the site will be made available to the winning bidder.
2.1(2) Section II Requirements Providing detailed training so that the department team knows how to easily upload new and maintain existing content. Would this be a 1x exercise via a training video or live/recorded demonstration?
Our proposal will include technical documentation, usage and best practices, etc. Is this the form of documentation that would be helpful to the team? Do they have this for their current content management within Drupal?
we have no documentation for maintaining our current Drupal site and this has led to significant challenges and missteps. You are free to propose whatever training delivery/model you think will be most cost effective so long as the plan adequately supports anticipated baseline learning needs.
2.1(2) Section II Requirements Providing detailed training so that the department team knows how to easily upload new and maintain existing content. Is there an opportunity to provide on-going support after the website launch (adoption / training, ad hoc creative / copywriting support, new templates, etc.) see above
2.1(3) Section II Requirements The site must meet all University of Washington and School of Medicine Security requirements and be compatible with University of Washington design standards. Will a brand guidelines/ Washington design standards be provided prior to project kick-off?
Are there Security requirements that are specific to Bioethics and Humanities website that would be different or unique that don't align with industry best practices for data handling, security, monitoring, etc.? In other words, do you have security guidelines we should follow? (this goes from password management to cookies, tracking, data handling etc.)
We want to be sure we are considering all of the requirements when it comes to the need for authentication, performance requirements and hosting needs. While we don't have University of Washington direct experience, we do have expertise in the Higher Edu sector (Old Dominion, Excelsior University, Microsoft Education, to name a few) and we manage several websites for organizations like Microsoft where security, PII and compliance are drivers in which vendor gets to complete the work. see above
2.1(3) Section II Requirements The site must meet all University of Washington and School of Medicine Security requirements and be compatible with University of Washington design standards. How many stakeholders will be involved in reviewing designs/decision making? Will we work with one point of contact or multiple teams (example: marketing for brand/content review, engineering for security/hosting etc.)? see above
2.1(3) Section II Requirements The site must be built on WordPress CMS. Will all licenses or hosting costs be funded by the university outside of this RFQ total cost? yes
2.1(3) Section II Requirements The site must be built on WordPress CMS. We understand that the site will leverage the UW branded WordPress theme and is a best practice for future sites. Is there anything additional that you are hoping to gain by moving to WordPress beyond alignment and conforming to the modern site look and feel? see above re WordPress migration
2.1(3) Section II Requirements The site should be capable of including a UW Net ID integrated sign-in through WordPress to offer a password protected portion of the website; and/or the site should integrate with UW Departmental SharePoint sites, for file sharing. Will we receive documentation on the UW Net ID SSO to facilitate integration? How much help, if any, will we have from your engineering team to set up SSO? We're assuming you already have SSO configured and we will need to configure an SSO connector with their server details and WordPress? yes
2.1(3) Section II Requirements The site should be capable of including a UW Net ID integrated sign-in through WordPress to offer a password protected portion of the website; and/or the site should integrate with UW Departmental SharePoint sites, for file sharing. What authentication is currently in-place? What would we be migrating to SSO - SAML or OpenID, we didn't see that 2FA is required. Please confirm. unknown at this time
2.1(3) Section II Requirements The site should be capable of including a UW Net ID integrated sign-in through WordPress to offer a password protected portion of the website; and/or the site should integrate with UW Departmental SharePoint sites, for file sharing. Could you provide use cases for SharePoint integration? What types of access (roles) will be required? If we opt to not use SharePoint, do you currently have an alternate file hosting system, or would we need to research/add something additional? We noticed on the UW IT site it references Google Drive and OneDrive. see above - SharePoint is already the established file system and will need to be used.
3.2(1) Section III Evaluation and Contract Award Depth of prior experience developing websites for other UW departments and working within the UW IT security environment as an external entity. Would you encourage an agency with proper credentials and experience to bid on this opportunity with UW if no direct prior experience? anyone who has the background and abilities to score highly on the evaluation criteria is encouraged to apply.
3.2(1) Section III Evaluation and Contract Award The new site could be hosted by UW IT or by the Contractor.
Any costs for external hosting and maintenance should be delineated in the proposal.
If hosting is proposed through UW IT, the contractor must clearly demonstrate their capacity to work within the UW IT systems’ constraints. Depending on the support model and priority of this workstream with the IT team, would determine whether it would be a better recommendation for external vendor to host versus supporting your IT team to set-up and host. Do you know how much help would we get from the IT team?
Is there documentation available on your hosting platform? Could this be provided for scoping purposes? The UW IT team is used to working with outside vendors on UW- hosted websites. Keep in mind however that UWIT response times can vary significantly since they are a campus-wide resource and an entirely separate department from our academic unit.
3.2(5) Section III Evaluation and Contract Award Total cost of the proposal relative to the budget of $45K, including breakdowns for hours allocated for specific tasks (assessed against the proposed budget and value for services offered). Can you please confirm this statement means that the budget allocated for this workstream between winning the contract and March 2026 is currently $45k? see above
3.2(6) Section III Evaluation and Contract Award Metric: Clarity of out-of-project-scope hourly rates and willingness to provide additional services if needed (assessed based on breadth of services, clarity and reasonableness of proposed rates). Will the site be connected to an established reporting mechanism? We are thinking through the tagging, report set-up, ongoing KPI and data tracking. Is there an opportunity to present capabilities for these services on-going? All bidders are encouraged to present what they believe to be necessary for us to meet our project goal.
4.1 Section IV Attachments SUBCONTRACTING – Neither the Contractor nor any Subcontractor shall enter into subcontracts for any of the Work contemplated under this Contract without obtaining prior written approval of the UW.
“Subcontract” means any separate agreement or contract between the Contractor and an individual or entity (“Subcontractor”) to perform all or portion of the duties and obligations that the Contractor is obligated to perform pursuant to this Contract. Does 1099 apply to this stipulation? We have a contractor network that supports our agencies ability to scale up and down based on development, technical or creative sprint cycles. We would like to understand if tapping into that network for specific aspects of the workstream would be frowned upon if we won this contract. see above. Any 1099 compensated workers constitutes the use of contractors.
4.6 Section IV Attachments Must meet: W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 at Level AA
Includes testing documentation and verification: Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) version 2.3 or higher Accessibility practices would occur before designs are shared with UW. If there are existing assets or materials that get migrated from Drupal to the new Word press site, each asset would need to be audited and updated. In order to accurately scope this, can you provide a link to the existing website so we can review and understand the content that would be migrated and the lift of updating any existing assets. see above.
1.13 Section 1 General All Contractor responses and any subsequent Contract will be “public records” as defined in RCW 42.56.010. Can you please share RFP responses back with us after contracts are signed? Or is there a location where we can find these once deemed public record? If we win or lose, we'd like to understand how the competition is quoting these services. That would be greatly appreciated. After the proposals become a public record, you will need to reach out to the Public Records department for this request.
2.1 1. Pre build information gathering and messaging work Bullet 1 Can you quantify the number of stakeholders that need to be involved in soliciting input? see above
2.1 1. Pre build information gathering and messaging work Bullet 2 Do you have someone already developing content strategy? Or is this part of this scope (or is what you mean by "messaging?") Yes, content strategy development is envisioned as part of the messaging work.
2.1 1. Pre build information gathering and messaging work Bullet 2 You mentioned the designs should reflect the site’s proposed architecture. Is this something that has already been developed? Or is this something that is produced in the previous bullet regarding collecting shared priorities from stakeholders? see above
2.1 2. Site Design, Build and Launch Bullet 3 Can you quantify the amount of content generation and copywriting? For example, will a photo shoot need to be conducted? Will content be provided by UW and then copyedited by us? see above
2.1 2. Site Design, Build and Launch Bullet 5 Can you quantify the number of photos to be edited for this estimate? see above
2.1 2. Site Design, Build and Launch Bullet 7 Can you expand on what kind of training is needed by the UW team? training will be needed to ensure staff understand the new site and its basic functionality in order to be able to maintain and update content over time
2.1 3. Functional, Technical and Performance Is the agency responsible for back-end development with this budget? not able to respond.
2.1 3. Functional, Technical and Performance Will be if a new theme can be created for this or will we need to extend the existing UW core theme to accommodate a new design. incomplete question - cannot answer as stated.
2.1 3. Functional, Technical and Performance Is there a requirement to utilize a page builder set up (such as Elelmentor, WP Bakery, etc.)? no
2.1 3. Functional, Technical and Performance Overall, can you share what customizations you would like? see above
2.1 3. Functional, Technical and Performance Does UW Medicine Bioethics and Humanities have a dedicated IT person or team that will be involved in this project? see above
2.2 Schedule Constraints Is there an opportunity to compress the schedule? (re: stretching the budget across 15 months ) The schedule can be modified but since the work will require significant engagement from the project team in the department, there will have to be sufficient time to accomplish those tasks/ The team will be managing this project amongst many other responsibilities for our staff.
3.2 5. Cost Effectiveness Is there an opportunity to expand on this budget? see above
2.1 Scope of Work N/A Is most of the content from the current site being migrated to the new site? Or, is it being completely rewritten? Or, is that part of the first phase of the project – determining which content is worth keeping and which is not? see above n/a N/A N/A Does the UW Bioethics & Humanities team have access to Google Analytics data for the current site? yes.
3.2 Evaluation Criteria & Scoring 5 Is the budget for this project $45K? see above https://itconnect.uw.edu/tools-services-support/access-authentication/sso/https://www.washington.edu/docs/references/web-hosting-options/https://depts.washington.edu/bhdept/
File details come from the government source that posted it. Updated .