RFP 15-061RLJ_Amendment No. 1_6.2.16.pdf

AMENDMENT No. 1

DATED: June 2, 2016

Palm Beach County Purchasing Department 50 South Military Trail, Suite 110, West Palm Beach, FL 33415

RFP No. 15-061R/LJ

Title: Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI)

REVISED Request for Proposal Due Date: July 6, 2016

This Amendment is issued to provide additional information and clarification to the RFP document:

A. Proposers are advised of the following changes to the RFP:

1. Section 1.7 TIMETABLE is revised as follows:

Deadline for receipt of proposals 7/6/16 4:00 p.m. Purchasing Department

50 S. Military Trail, Ste. 110

W. P. B., FL 33415

Selection Committee Meeting 7/25/16 9:00 a.m. Purchasing Department 50 S. Military Trail Room 1N-142 North/South

W. P. B., FL 33415

Oral Presentations/ 8/1/16 9:00 a.m. Purchasing Department Selection Committee 50 S. Military Trail Meeting (if conducted) Room 1N-142 North/South

W. P. B., FL 33415

Deadline for receipt of BAFO’s (if required) 8/8/16 4:00 p.m. Purchasing Department

50 S. Military Trail, Ste. 110

W. P. B., FL 33415

Selection Committee Meeting (if required) 8/15/16 9:00 a.m. Purchasing Department 50 S. Military Trail Room 1N-142 North/South

W. P. B., FL 33415

Posting Date of Notice 8/17/16 Purchasing Department of Intent to Award 50 S. Military Trail, Ste. 110

W. P. B., FL 33415

www.pbcgov.com/purchasing http://www.pbcgov.com/purchasing

AMENDMENT NO. 1 to

BCC Award Date 9/27/16 Governmental Center 301 N. Olive Avenue, 6th Floor

W.P.B., FL 33401

Contract Start Date 9/27/16

2. Section 1.8 PROPOSAL SUBMISSION, delete the first paragraph in its entirety and replace with the following:

One (1) unbound original, six (6) bound copies, and one (1) electronic copy in pdf (CD or flash drive) of the complete proposal must be received in the Purchasing Department by July 6, 2016, 4:00 p.m. local time. The original and all copies must be submitted in a sealed envelope or container. The proposer’s complete return address must be included on the outer envelope or wrapped enclosing any materials submitted in response to this RFP. The outer envelope or wrapper should be addressed as follows:

Proposer Name Address Phone No.

Palm Beach County Board of County Commissioners Purchasing Department 50 South Military Trail, Suite 110 West Palm Beach, Florida 33415 RFP No. 15-061R/LJ

Title: ADVANCED METERING INFRASTRUCTURE (AMI) Due Date: July 6, 2016, 4:00 p.m. local time

3. Section 3.2 PROJECT APPROACH/UNDERSTANDING/SATISFACTION OF

REQUIREMENTS INFORMATION, Subsection 3.2.5, Project Timeline:, delete the last sentence in its entirety and replace with the following:

“The schedule should assume monthly deliveries of 3000-5000 meters up to a total of 51,840 where meter size and port type for each delivery will be provided by the County.”

4. Section 6, APPENDICES, is revised to delete APPENDIX A, PRICE PROPOSAL

PAGES in its entirety and replace it with Attachment 1, REVISED APPENDIX A, PRICE PROPOSAL PAGES. Proposer shall submit the REVISED PRICE PROPOSAL PAGES in their proposals in lieu of the previous APPENDIX A, PRICE PROPOSAL PAGES.

B. Questions received from IBT Group and the Water Utilities Department’s responses:

Q.1. Would it be possible to obtain the service addresses or GPS locations for all the water meters in the county that are within the scope of the AMI project in order to perform a propagation study?

A.1. GPS locations are not available for the meters. A list of service addresses is provided in this Amendment as Attachment 2. Attachment 2 is posted as four separate documents on the VSS website.

Q.2. Want to clarify that the correct submittal date is June 6, 2016 as mentioned throughout the document and not on May 26, 2016 as indicated in section 1.8, second sentence.

A.2. See Section A., item 2. above.

C. Questions received from Ferguson Waterworks Meter & Automation Group and the Water Utilities Department’s responses:

Q.1. After reviewing the RFP, Ferguson Waterworks Meter & Automation Group would like to officially request a 1 month extension to gather all the required information necessary to submit our response, from June 6th to July 5th if possible.

A.1. See Section A., item 2. above.

D. Questions received from ZennerUSA and the Water Utilities Department’s responses:

Q.1. On Sensus direct read meters, who is responsible for providing the encoded register?

A.1. The awarded vendor is responsible for providing the encoded register.

Q.2. Will Sensus and Neptune meters provide an ASCII external port or “pigtail” for connecting an external MIU? If no, who will provide the meter registers for the project?

A.2. Sensus does not offer an external MIU. It is unknown if Neptune offers an external MIU. The awarded vendor is responsible for providing the register.

Q.3. What type of Neptune registers are in your system? Do their meters have the integrate N900 radios built onto/into the register?

A.3. We currently use Neptune R900I AMR meters. Yes, the R900I is integrated into the register.

Q.4. Who will be responsible for MIU installs – the city or the system provider/contractor?

A.4. All installations will be completed by County employees.

Q.5. Regarding the Article 4 regarding payments and section 3.5, is it 90% per standard Palm Beach County guidelines or 85% as shown in 3.5?

A.5. The language in Article 4 of the Sample Standard Contract contains general language that will be replaced with more specific language based upon the proposal and potential contract negotiation. In this case, the second paragraph will be revised to incorporate the timeline and payment schedule submitted by the selected proposer.

As stated in Section 3.5, interim payments should total 85% of the total contract amount. The remaining 15% will be made as a final payment when full acceptance testing is complete.

E. Question received from HD Supply and the Water Utilities Department’s response:

Q.1. Please clarify the quantity of meters to be used on the pricing page. The document shows:

Single Box 2,700 Dual Box 24,300 1" Single 540 Should we use 51,300 total 5/8 x (3/4) meters? 48,600 (dual) plus 2,700 (single) = 51,300 5/8 x (3/4) meters?

A.1. 51,300 5/8” x 3/4” meters are required for the single and dual boxes as well as 540 single 1” meters. These quantities are necessary to complete the initial phase of the project and should be reflected on the price pages.

F. Questions received from Fortiline Waterworks and the Water Utilities

Department’s response:

Q.1. When Palm Beach County asks for company financials, will that information remain private and confidential to the County, or disclosed to the general public?

A.1. As indicated in Section 2.7 of the RFP, Palm Beach County is subject to Florida’s

Public Records Laws. Absent any specific exemption from those laws, all documents submitted in response to the RFP shall become a public record. At this time, there is no specific exemption from the public records laws for financial statements, although certain information (i.e., credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and social security numbers) contained within financial statements may be exempt from review, and will be redacted from any released documents. If the County determines that the information provided meets the statutory definition for trade secrets as defined in Florida State Statute 812.081, the information will remain confidential and exempt from disclosure.

Q.2. Will Palm Beach County sign a Confidentiality Agreement concerning company financials?

A.2. No, the County cannot sign a confidentiality agreement. See Section F, A.1.

above.

Q.3. What does “final system acceptance” mean? It is not defined and needs to be defined in order for a vendor to understand how to qualify for payment.

A.3. Acceptance Testing is addressed in Section 4.10 of the Scope of Work/Services.

Q.4. If a vendor chooses not to have a 15% holdback for final system acceptance

(since they are not installing the product and whereby can’t be responsible for what happens in the field), does this make them noncompliant on the RFP and, as a result, excluded from consideration?

A.4. The 15% retainage is not an option but a requirement to ensure full system function.

Q.5. The RFP requests that the manufacturers work together to be sure that warranties will be honored if “X” brand meter is connected to “Y” brand radio transmitter. The manufacturers are willing to discuss warranty concerns with Palm Beach County, but not with each other over concerns of “collusory” behavior. Is Palm Beach County willing to accept this exception to the RFP?

A.5. The requirement of Section 4.7, WATER METER SPECIFICATIONS, subsection

4.7.3 is not for the manufacturer’s to work together but, that the equipment shall work together. The intent of this section is that the proposed AMI transmitter shall interface with any existing Neptune and Sensus meters that are currently in the ground, and without voiding the warranty of either the existing meters or the AMI interface.

G. Questions received from Silver Spring Networks and the Water Utilities

Department’s response:

Q.1. Will the Water Utilities Department also be seeking integration services for the

AMI Head End System to your CIS or billing system?

A.1. If you are asking about Meter Data Management (MDM), then, yes, each vendor must provide MDM.

Q.2. Will the Department be contracting for all meter endpoints and release purchase orders on a yearly basis based upon available budget?

A.2. Yes, the County will purchase meters and meter endpoints as needed.

Q.3. Section 1.4 – What billing system is the county using?

A.3. CIS is an internal custom billing program built by the County.

Q.4. Section 1.4b – Does “remote deactivation” of the meter indicate that remote shut-off and turn-on is required or is the intent to set the meters to inactive and monitor usage?

A.4. Physical deactivation is not required. The intent of remote shut-off is to set the meters and monitor usage.

Q.5. Is the county planning to replace the meters that are currently in place, or would the County be open to simply adding/retrofitting AMI transponders to those meters when possible?

A.5. The County is looking to replace all meters with new.

Q.6. If simply adding transponders to the meters, what are the model numbers of the existing meters?

A.6. See Section G, A.5. above.

Q.7. Would the maintenance agreement requested by the County in Section 4.11 include “end point trouble shooting”? If not, who would be providing the end point troubleshooting?

A.7. When necessary, County employees will repair or replace endpoints.

Q.8. Would like to respectfully ask for a two week extension on the current due date

(June 6, 2016).

A.8. See Section A., item 2. above.

H. Question received from Itron and the Water Utilities Department’s response:

Q.1. Will Palm Beach County kindly extend the due date by 10 days or two weeks?

A.1. See Section A., item 2. above.

Q.2. We would like to request a photo of a single meter box setup and a dual meter box setup, as well as photos of the stand type lid used for each one. This way we can better tailor our response to your proposal.

A.2. Photos of both single meter box setup and dual meter box setup as well as photos of the lid used are provided in this Amendment as Attachment 3.

All changes addressed in this Amendment No. 1 shall be incorporated into RFP No. 15- 061R/LJ and the final contract. All other terms and conditions of the RFP remain the same and unchanged.