Weather Services and Decision Dashboard

The City of Austin is soliciting proposals for a utility-grade weather forecasting and decision dashboard software solution to support Austin Energy's operational planning and storm response, with proposals due November 5, 2026 at 2:00 P.M. CST and a pre-offer conference scheduled for October 13, 2026 via Microsoft Teams.

Minimum qualifications require current certification compliance in FedRAMP, TX-RAMP, ISO/IEC 27000 series, and NIST 800 certifications; disclosure of government-use environment support with NIST 800-53 security controls; and AES-256 encryption at minimum for data at rest with cloud-native key management services or Bring Your Own Key functionality. All staff with logical or physical access to customer data must be located within the contiguous United States and undergo criminal and financial background checks.

The solution must deliver 24/7/365 access to professional meteorologists, real-time and forecasted weather data with minimum 15-minute transmission intervals to Austin Energy's Advanced Distribution Management System, predictive models updated hourly, integration with the utility's weather station network, mobile and desktop accessibility, and outage prediction tailored to Austin-area risks including floods, high winds, fire threats, and freezing events. The contractor must maintain 99.99% availability and provide minimum two training sessions annually.

The initial contract term is 24 months (Years 1 and 2) with three optional 12-month renewal periods. Implementation follows an eight-milestone payment schedule with work initiation required within 14 business days of award and project kickoff within 30 days. The scope includes 520,000+ customer service territory support across the City of Austin.

Evaluation allocates 25 points for Utility Solution Concept and Strategy, 35 points for Experience, 20 points for Price, and up to 10 points each for Local Business Preference (Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos MSA) and Small Business Preference (SBA-certified small businesses or those using small business subcontractors for at least 5% of contract value). No MBE/WBE subcontracting goals apply. Questions are due October 15, 2026 at 5:00 P.M. CST. All proposals must remain valid for 180 calendar days. The contractor must carry Commercial General Liability, Professional Liability, and Cyber Liability insurance at $2,000,000 minimum per occurrence and aggregate. Data handling controls mandate four-hour incident reporting, NIST 800-88 or DoD 5220.22-M secure destruction standards, and City-conducted penetration testing at no additional cost.