Addendum 3 2025-022.pdf

Request for Proposals 2025-022 Union County Phone System Upgrade

ADDENDUM No. 3 ISSUE DATE: December 19, 2024

Responding Offerors on this project are hereby notified that this Addendum shall be made a part of the above named RFP document.

The following items add to, modify, and/or clarify the RFP documents and shall have the full force and effect of the original Documents. This Addendum shall be acknowledged by the Offeror in the RFP document.

Union County, North Carolina Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

Delete/Add/Replace Section

1. Delete: the question deadline date of December 6, 2025, at 5:00 PM EST in its entirety throughout the bid document and

REPLACE with the following question deadline date: December 6, 2024, at 5:00 PM EST

2. Section 7.1 Terms and Conditions

Delete: initial term of ten (10) years with two (2) two-years renewal options

Replace with: initial term of five (5) years with three (3) two-year renewal options.

3. Section 6 Detailed Submittal Requirements and Instructions

Delete: 5th Paragraph: “The total length of the proposal should be no more than 30 pages…”

Replace with: “The total length of the proposal should be no more than 75 pages…”

Question/Answer Section

1. Question: For the phone system upgrade, it was stated that you all have (5) T1’s with

Lumen. Are you all in contract with them, or would you be open to a competitive proposal to eliminate your Lumen expenses

Answer: Yes, the County is open to all proposals

2. Question: Do you all have a virtual environment?

Answer: Yes

3. Question: How many of these 1,400 users will need new desk phones? Are the current phones at the end of their manufacturer's warranty or at end-of-life

Answer: An official count is not available, and Union County will work on a more accurate count once vendor is selected. Yes, current desk phones are approaching end of life

4. Question: Of these users, how many are "power users" on the phone most of the day versus "occasional phone users" who only make occasional calls but need voice mail as a feature?

Answer: Power users make up about 10 percent of end users

5. Question: How many users will be "office administrators" and need access to handle calls for an entire department?

Answer: An official count is not available, and Union County will work on a more accurate count once vendor is selected. Yes, current desk phones are approaching end of life

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

6. Question: How many call centers do you have in the county where you might have a department that answers calls in a call queue and a call center supervisor who needs the ability to monitor the call center users, including monitoring the users' calls in real-time?

Answer: Currently we have three departments that utilize call centers

7. Question: How many users will be working remotely? Will these users want a telephone device, or will they prefer a softphone, browser-based telephone for calling using a headset attached to their computer? Or is the county interested in eSIMs for connectivity to our hosted platform?

Answer: Hybrid and remote work is an option for many end users

8. Question: Do you have users who will be working remotely from a smartphone or mobile application? If so, how many?

Answer: Refer to Question #7

9. Question: How many physical locations do you have in Union County? The reason for this question is for E-911 purposes

Answer: 18

10. Question: How many total telephone numbers do you have that are being actively used?

Do all 1,400 users have individual direct-dial telephone numbers?

Answer: Refer to Question #3

11. Question: Who is your current Internet Service Provider for your primary office locations, excluding remote workers who might work from home occasionally?

Answer: Lumen

12. Question: Do you have a Router/Firewall engineer who manages the connectivity for the primary office locations? Can this individual allow qualified and verified traffic from our four data centers to connect to your user's device connections to us for our geo-redundant voice services?

Answer: We currently do not employ a Router/Firewall engineer

13. Question: Your RFP mentions conference bridges. How many do you have, and what is their capacity?

Answer: Currently these are used sparingly and have limited capacity

14. Question: Your RFP mentions you need call recording. What are the requirements for call recording? Will you have extensions that will have call recording always or on-demand recording? Do you have an estimate of how many minutes or hours of call recording you will need and what the long-term retention requirements?

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

Answer: These specifics will be handled with the departments currently utilizing a call center solution and the vendor of choice

15. Question: What brand is your building paging system?

Answer: The Human Services Agency utilizes a Lencore paging system. The Sheriff’s Office uses the IPECS system

16. Question: Your RFP does not mention a need for FAX services. How do you currently handle in and outbound faxing and are you looking for a new vendor for this application?

If so, how many fax devices do you have, and how are they used?

Answer: The County currently utilizes Rightfax and has approximately 50 devices

17. Question: Your RPF states you have 1,400 phones: "The County deploys an LG- Erickson system utilizing LG-Erickson's Integrated Process Execution Control (IPEC) system. Union County Information Technology estimates there are currently 1400 desk phones (IPECS UCP2400 Appl Version: S-UCP-Tmp2103-4.0.43-App) but does not state the specific model phone you have deployed for desktop use. Please share the inventory of the specific phone models currently deployed and their life cycle.

Answer: These specifics will be handled with the departments currently utilizing a call center solution and the vendor of choice

18. Question: Will your office staff have access to a POE switch for phone connectivity?

Answer: Yes

19. Question: In your RFP, you state that you have five T1s for voice services. Are these PRIs or channelized T1s? Based on your current provider, Lumen can you provide us with the average monthly call volume for inbound and outbound minutes of usage.

Answer: Information not available at this time

20. Question: Does your County ever need to make international calls outside the +1 calling area?

Answer: Yes

21. Question: Does your County have any toll-free inbound telephone numbers, and if so, what is the average monthly number of minutes of inbound usage?

Answer: No

22. Question: The only details for specifications on what to price is in the scope of work section. Stating there are 1400 desk phones and 120 call paths currently on 5 Lumen T- 1’s. Are there any work from home workers not included in the 1400 desks?

Answer: No

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

23. Question: Are there common area/courtesy phones, elevator or emergency phones?(there is mention of analog devices, but no quantities).

Answer: The county has approximately 15 -17 locations among elevators and emergency phones

24. Question: Are there different models of phones required for different departments?

Answer: Specifics will be discussed with the vendor of choice, We would like 3 choices must support at least 1gb passthrough

25. Question: Do you integrate with a paging system with overhead speakers?

Answer: The Human Services Agency integrates with a Lencore paging system within that building

26. Question: The billing section questions are different based on a premises based or Hosted solution. Do you want a price for both Premises & Hosted or do want 1 or the other

Answer: Both

27. Question: We are counting a total of 1400 internal lines. Is 1400 the total license count? How many lines are for end users? How many lines are for common area devices (breakrooms, conference rooms, etc.)? Please specifically break out the different license types above.

Answer:

• Total license count? Up to 1400

• Lines for end users? Approximately 1400

• Lines for common area devices? No Common Devices

28. Question: Is 1400 DIDs are in current inventory? How many will you need to port over?

Answer: This will be dependent on the solution

29. Question: Can you provide how many phones will be needed by user type? Common Area device (breakroom), Knowledge Worker, Receptionist, Conference Phone, Executive Phone, and WIFI enabled phones by type.

Answer: Refer to the Scope in the RFP. We have not broken down the number of phones needed in this format.

30. Question: If new phones must be purchased do you have a preference between Yealink and Poly? If you are wanting to try to leverage existing phones, please list manufacturer, model, and quantity of each.

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

Answer: Union Count is not trying to leverage existing phones and there is not a preference.

31. Question: Do you have multiple internet service providers in your data center? Do you have last mile resiliency? Do you have wireless backup system?

Answer:

• Do you have multiple internet service providers in your data center? Yes

• Do you have last mile resiliency? No

• Do you have wireless backup system? No wireless Backup system

32. Question: What manufacturer and model of your paging system does the proposed solution need to integrate with? How many total paging systems are required?

Answer:

• Lencore and IPECs.

• Two paging systems

33. Question: How many total ATA ports are required? Can you give a breakdown of ATA ports by location so we can properly scope the ATA models and quantities. Please provide fax machine totals per location is you want to keep existing faxing in place.

Answer: Up to 150

34. Question: How many total Fax numbers will need to be ported to an eFax service? Do your Fax services require HIPPA compliance? What is your total monthly outbound fax volume?

Answer:

• We are currently using Rightfax.

• HIPPA compliance? Yes

• Refer to Question #33 for estimated totals

• Total monthly outbound fax volume? N/A

35. Question: Do you require survivability at your data center(s)? Or do you require local survivability at each location? If at each location provide the total location count.

Answer: Data Center – Yes. Each location - No

36. Question: How many users will need Call Queue live reporting for time in queue, abandoned calls, overflowed to VM. The proposed solution supports historical reporting without additional licensing.

Answer: Refer to the Scope in the RFP. We have not broken down the requested solution in this format.

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

37. Question: Do you want headsets quoted? If so how many wireless and how many wired? Would you like mono or dual headsets? If so, please provide how many of each type?

Answer: This will be negotiated with the vendor of choice

38. Question: Do you require onsite services (Boots on the Ground) for hardware setup, ATA, desk phones? If so, do you have potential number of phones and hardware to be deploy with onsite technicians to help ensure accurate pricing?

Answer: Refer to section 4 Scope of Work in RFP 2025-022

39. Question: What is the potential timeframe to start the implementation and when would you potentially like to see be finished?

Answer: Refer to section 4 Scope of Work in RFP 2025-022

40. Question: How many call center agents, supervisors, and admins do you have?

Answer: 70 agents, 10 Supervisors, 5 Admins

41. Question: What is the configuration of the Analog requirements if any. Is the cable run to an IDF in locations, meaning, can a mult-port device be used or will it require individual ATA to support analog requirements.

Answer: A multi-port device can be used in most cases

42. Question: The system must include robust failover capabilities to ensure uninterrupted service during a power or internet outage. This failover system should automatically activate to maintain phone system operations during any disruption. Will they be providing battery backup for this feature in all locations? Like to more about the expectations here.

Answer: Yes UPS is in place

43. Question: How many physical phones required? How many soft phones required?

Answer: This will be determined once vendor is selected.

44. Question: Any software integration other than Microsoft Teams required?

Answer: No

45. Question: Overhead Paging. Only at Human Resources and Sheriff’s office? Are the systems analog or digital. Is it a Lincor System at both sites?

46. Question: Any requirements for door security to integrate with the phone system?

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

Answer: No

47. Question: How many DID’s required? How many extensions?

Answer: An official count is not available at this time and Union County will work on a more accurate count once vendor is selected. Yes, current desk phones are approaching end of life

48. Question: The RFP seeks a 10-year contract term, will other term lengths be considered?

Answer: Refer to Add/Delete/Replace section, item #2.

49. Question: Based on the requirements of the RFP will the county accept proposals longer than 34 pages or can attachments be included that will not be factored into the 34 page requirement?

Answer: Refer to Add/Delete/Replace section, item #3.

Question: Can you please clarify the dates for this RFP as there appear to be typos on the RFP documents?

Answer:

Refer to Add/Delete/Replace section, item #1 for question deadline clarification.

Refer to Addendum #2 for RFP submission deadline clarification.

50. Question: Please clarify counts for softphones v desk phones, as well as agent seats, supervisor seats, etc

Answer: Will be determined in collaboration with new vendor

51. Question: Is a mass email notification acceptable?

Answer: Yes

52. Question: How many users will need to be live monitored outside of contact center agents?

Answer: 70

53. Question: Is estimated position in queue only acceptable?

Answer: Yes

54. Question: How many users utilizing softphone only? How many users utilizing physical phones. Preferably, provide user counts with softphone/physical phone counts by location.

Answer: Specifics were not provided

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

55. Question: Is the County expecting a formalized POC on this, or are they looking for us to simply answer the questions as listed? If a POC is expected, how long would the County expect this to take?

Answer: Discuss POC requirements

56. Question: How many analogs do you have that are serving elevators, modems, fax? Please provide counts by type.

Answer: Less than fifteen (15)

57. Question: How many contact center agents? How many supervisors?

Answer: Refer to Question/Answer section, item number 40.

58. Question: What type of interface will be available on the current LG/Ericcson system for integration to allow vendors to adhere to requirement for short term extension dialing between current desktop phone endpoints and the new software clients on devices during the deployment phase?

Answer: Looking for a vendor recommendation

59. Question: Please explain contact center requirements, specifically noting number of agents, supervisors and call queues per department.

Answer: Refer to Question/Answer section, item number 40.

60. Question: Please also note if the county requires or desires an ability to support routing and reporting on SMS, email or other multimedia traffic to the ACD queues. - This RFP does not have a routing or reporting on SMS, email or other multimedia traffic requirements.

Answer: Looking for a vendor recommendation

61. Question: Please provide a list of required analog devices needed for this communication solution. Please note where they are located.

62. Answer: Refer to the Scope in the RFP. We have not broken down the analog devices needed in this format.

Question: Please confirm that the proposed solution is to be fully deployed, including desktop devices using vendor local installation and training staff who will be on site before, during and after the installation.

Answer: Implementation specifics will be negotiated with the vendor of choice

63. Question: For audio conferencing requirements, how many concurrent callers per conference are required?

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

Answer: Union County currently doesn’t have a concurrent caller conference requirement

64. Question: For API integration, which external databases within departments require this integration, and please describe any actual data mining requirements or how information would be presented or required via an Interactive Voice Response integration.

Answer: This RFP does not have a data mining requirement to be evaluated on

65. Question: Please confirm how many published Direct Inward Dial numbers will be required for inbound calls and E911.

Answer: All DIDs

66. Question: Please describe current and new virtual hosts with available resources.

Please also note when new redundant virtual environment will be in place and the connectivity and bandwidth between hosts.

Answer: Current Host consist of 8 servers at site 1. Future will have 6 host at site 1 and 2 at DR site. Implementation should be completed by 7/1/25. At least 10gb between sites

67. Question: Would the County be interested in their AZURE tenant being a resilient site for the voice network, providing resiliency external to the local environment? Please describe the current Azure tenant environment.

Answer: For security reasons, details cannot be provided. An Azure tenant being a resilient site could be a possible solution

68. Question: What is your current MS Teams seat licensing? (E3, E5….)

Answer: A blend between E3 and E5 but primarily E3

69. Question: Where is the current PBX system located and is it currently hosted in multiple buildings? - Our current phone solution is an onprem solution, we will not be disclosing physical addresses.

Answer:

• Where is the current PBX system located? The Address is 500 North Main Street Monroe, NC 28112.

• Is it currently hosted in multiple buildings? No

70. Question: If it is hosted in multiple locations how many locations have PRI/SIP Trunks coming into them?

Answer: Current has PRI’s at one location. If moving to SIP it should be available at 2

71. Question: How many ATA’s are required based on the following types.

Answer: We currently have 8 ata’s mixture of 32port 8port and 4port

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

72. Question: Fire alarm ata’s – for any fire alarm that has not migrated to an IP based system

Answer: Fire panels and cellular

73. Question: Modem Tone ata’s – typically older devices that reported back data like refrigerators or a breathalyzer at the sheriff’s office.

Answer: None

74. Question: Do the new handsets have any special requirements like color versus black and white, touchscreen, number of memory buttons, Bluetooth, wireless, etc?

Answer: Refer to the Scope in the RFP. We have not broken down the handsets needed in this format.

75. Question: How many and what kind of current paging systems will need to be integrated with the new system?

Answer: Lencore paging system. The Sheriff’s Office uses the IPECS system

76. Question: Are you also looking for headset hardware? If so, we can provide a quotation for the headset demand, but we need to confirm whether the headset demand is generated after the phone demand is met and the specific phone connection model and confirm whether the headset demand is Bluetooth or DECT headset demand.

Answer: Headset demand will be generated after the phone demand is met

77. Question: Attendance to the non-mandatory conference & site visit via virtual through the MS Teams meeting was difficult, at best, to hear the questions and answers provided. Q. When will the answers to those questions be made available to review?

Answer: Refer to Addendum #3, Question/Answer section.

78. Question: In the document Request for Proposals No. 2025-022 Union County Phone System Upgrade, submissions on the cover page are due 12/19/2024 but in section 2.1 the submission deadline is 12/19/2025. Additionally, in section 2.4 proposal questions are due 12/6/2025. Q. Will the county offer an extension for submittals with consistent dates and more time during the holidays to respond to the RFP with corrected dates via an addendum?

Answer: Refer to Question/Answer section, item #50.

79. Question: Which Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is currently in use within your organization.

Answer: We do not use any specific CRM products, each department employees their own customer management system that integrates with their department functions

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

80. Question: Which Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is currently implemented by your organization?

Answer: Tyler Tech Munis

81. Question: How many total contact center agents do you have or anticipate to have contact center features available for?

Answer: Approximately 70 Call Center agents

82. Question: How many total business users do you have?

Answer: This has not been quantified

83. Question: Confirm approximately 70 Call Center agents.

Answer: Confirmed

84. Question: Confirm faxing is thru another vendor and not part of this RFP

Answer: Confirmed

85. Question: Confirm chat platform/vendor and that is not part of this RFP.

Answer: Confirmed

86. Question: How many of those locations need to be reported to the PSAP as a discrete go-to address?

Answer: All addresses

87. Do any of those locations need to have more than one PSAP go-to address (front door, back employee entrance, loading dock, for example)

Answer: Yes

88. Question: Give us the addresses of both the main and planned redundant data center.

Answer: For security reasons we will not be publishing this information

89. Question: Confirm the number of automated attendants you want to set up. The guess at this week’s pre-bid meeting was 15-20, but some thought might be able to close up the range.

Answer: 20

90. Question: Define the number of network wiring closets/switches you use to support the current VoIP network.

Answer: For security reasons we will not be publishing this information

91. Question: Confirm that all network switches are Aruba. If possible, specify the switch types and numbers of switches.

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

Answer: For security reasons we will not be publishing this information

92. Question: Are all of the Aruba switches (or other switches) serving the existing and planned VoIP system managed?

Answer: Yes

93. Question: Are all the network wiring closets in locations with more than one wiring closet connected with 10 gigabit Ethernet?

Answer: Yes Mixed 100Mb/1gb/10gb/20gb

94. Question: Do you use Central, IMC or command line management for switch management?

Answer: Union County uses Command line and Control.

95. Question: Do you currently have any capacity or call quality issues attributable to the local area networks?

96. Question: Please guess at the distribution of phone types you have (1080i, 1050i, 1040i, 1030i, 1020i, 1010i).

Answer: We would like 3 options that must support at least 1gb passthrough

97. Question: Guess at the number of wireless headsets that need to be supported

Answer: Will be determined with selected vendor

98. Question: Do you want to retain some of your existing T-1 circuits to support the local and long distance calling? If so, how many of those T-1s do you want to keep?

Answer: Negotiated with the vendor of choice

99. Question: Do you want cellular 4G/5G backup for your Internet circuits or T-1’s?

Answer: To be determined with selected vendor

100. Question: Are all 1,400 phone locations already provided with a satisfactory network drop with gigabit Ethernet connectivity?

Answer: Yes

101. Question: Speculate on the number of DIDs that will actually be ported and used (is it all 1,400 or one for each of the 15-20 automated attendants, or something in between?

Answer: Has not been decided yet, will work with new vendor on this

102. Question: Do you have any records that show average local and long distance calling minutes? Most important are the monthly outbound calling minutes.

Addendum No. 3, RFP 2025-022, Union County Phone System Upgrade

Answer: We currently do not have that information

103. Question: Specify the number of initial virtual phone applications you need to use

Answer: This will be determined by the vendor of choice

104. Question: Confirm that you do not need to support your existing faxes on this new system (putting legacy faxes on a VoIP system is never a good idea)

Answer: Discussion will be with vendor of choice

105. Question: Confirm that the call center features outlined in Paragraphs 4.3 and 4.4 of your RFP apply only to those four departments and 70 call center agents and not to the entire 1,400 population of new IP phone users.

Answer: Confirmed

106. Question: You mentioned a train-the-trainers way of passing the training out, where those trainers would then train their departments. How many trainers would the successful bidder be expected to train?

Answer: No more than six trainers.

107. Question: Does the successful bidder need to train all of the users on the phone system, or is a train-the-trainers approach with the publishing of phone guides satisfactory?

Answer: Train the trainers approach will be acceptable

108. Question: How many IT staff need to be trained on the management of the installed system?

Answer: No more than 5 FTEs

109. Question: You specify a six-month deployment. Why so long?

Answer: Given the complexity and lack of specifics Union County didn’t want to limit the deployment time, but also would be satisfied if the deployment took less time.

110. Question: How many IT staff will be available to assist with the implementation?

Answer: We have limited staff but at least two employees could be available depending on the time and dates of deployment.

111. Question: Do you want to deploy the phones yourselves, or to assist with the deployment, or have us deploy all the phones?

Answer: We will want assistance in deploying the phones.

End of Addendum No. 3