Question & Answers

Wayne County Regional Educational Service Agency (WCRESA), in partnership with Oakland Schools, is issuing RFP 19-012-651 for an Advanced Communication System to serve multiple school districts across Wayne and Oakland Counties, Michigan. The procurement seeks proposals for a comprehensive voice communications infrastructure upgrade including approximately 5,000 IP-based handsets, unified communications capabilities, mass notification systems, and associated voice services across at least ten entities: Farmington Public Schools, Clarenceville School District, Southfield Public Schools, West Bloomfield School District, Dearborn Heights School District 7, River Rouge, Redford Union, The Dearborn Academy, WCRESA, and Westwood Community School District. Deliverables include turnkey solutions encompassing equipment, installation, configuration, training, and three years of service with two optional one-year renewal periods, with implementation beginning in November 2019 and deployment timelines extending through March 2020. Vendors may propose three deployment architecture options: multi-tenant cloud-hosted, multi-tenant on-premise, or single-tenant on-premise systems. Proposals must include detailed equipment lists, labor estimates by task type, feature descriptions, and pricing for miscellaneous voice services including an estimated 10 ISDN PRI circuits, 42 IP voice gateway and SIP trunking circuits, 200 POTS lines, long distance service, and optional cellular fax solutions, with new multi-year contracts required beginning July 1, 2020. Proposals must be accompanied by comprehensive liability insurance certificates, notarized ethical standards and conflict of interest affidavits, statements of qualifications with three educational client references, warranty terms of one, three, or five years with next-business-day hardware replacement shipping, and acceptance or exceptions to WCRESA's Master Service Agreement. The pre-bid meeting is scheduled for Monday, September 16, 2019, at 1:00 p.m. EST at Wayne RESA's office in Wayne, Michigan, with proposals due by 12:00 p.m. on Thursday, September 26, 2019, and supplier presentations and site visits to be scheduled at dates to be determined.

The RFP documents do not identify specific set-aside designations, disadvantaged enterprise restrictions, or incumbent contractor information. The existing technology infrastructure that vendors must integrate includes multiple email platforms (Exchange, O365, and Google), a single Active Directory domain in Oakland County with separate domains per district in Wayne County, adequate existing bandwidth for VoIP implementation, and existing AT&T consortium contracts covering voice services through June 30, 2019. Licensing may be purchased under a single umbrella agreement with costs apportioned equally among participating districts. The RFP documents do not explicitly state total award values or budget ranges; however, the scope of approximately 5,000 handsets across ten entities with three-year service terms and associated infrastructure suggests a substantial contract. Vendors should submit pricing with flexible labor rate formats reflecting fixed costs associated with phone system installation, with separate line items for fax support ports, unified communications clients, and optional features such as call recording and advanced warranty options.