DAILY MAIL PROCESSING AND BULK MAILING SERVICES
| Location: | Virginia |
|---|---|
| Posted: | Apr 22, 2026 |
| Due: | May 21, 2026 |
| Agency: | City of Lynchburg |
| Type of Government: | State & Local |
| Category: |
|
| Solicitation No: | 2026-082 |
| Publication URL: | To access bid details, please log in. |
| Bid Number: |
2026-082
|
| Bid Title: |
DAILY MAIL PROCESSING AND BULK MAILING SERVICES
|
| Category: | Request for Proposals |
| Status: | Open |
|
Attachment Preview
REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS TITLE PAGE
Include This Page as the First Page in Your Proposal Response
City of Lynchburg, Virginia
Procurement Division
Proposal Title: Daily Mail Processing and Bulk Mailing Services
This is the City of Lynchburg's Request for Proposals (RFP) No. 2026-082, issued April 22, 2026.
Direct inquires for information to: Matt Marsteller; Phone: 434-455-4233 or e-mail at
matthew.marsteller@lynchburgva.gov All requests for clarification of or questions regarding this RFP
must be made in writing and be received by 4:00 p.m. on May 14, 2026. All Addenda shall be issued
no later than 4:00 p.m. on May 15, 2026. All responses to this solicitation shall be in strict accordance
with the requirements set forth in this proposal document and the ensuing contract documents.
Sealed proposals will be publicly accepted prior to 4:00 p.m., May 21, 2026; however, only the names
of firms responding will be available for announcement. Proposals received after the stated due date and
time shall not be considered. Submit proposals electronically through the City’s Bid Postings website as
noted below. Acknowledge all addenda so issued in the space provided below. Any alteration or changes
to this Request for Proposals will be made only by written addendum issued by the City of Lynchburg,
Procurement Division.
An Optional Virtual Pre-proposal meeting will take place on April 30, 2026 at 10:00 a.m. via a Microsoft
Teams link posted to the City’s website at the address listed below.
All Offerors are responsible for obtaining issued addenda from the City’s Procurement website:
http://www.lynchburgva.gov/Bids.aspx
Acknowledge receipt of addenda here: No. ________ Date: _______ No. _______ Date: _______ No. _______ Date:
______
Information the Offeror deems Proprietary is included in the proposal response in section(s):
See Paragraph B. on page 2 for guidelines on submitting proprietary
information.
In compliance with this Request for Proposals and all the conditions imposed therein, the undersigned
offers and agrees to furnish the services in accordance with the attached proposal or as mutually agreed
by subsequent negotiations. By my signature below, I certify that I am authorized to bind the Offeror in
any and all negotiations and/or contractual matters relating to this Request for Proposals. Sign in ink and
type or print requested information.
Full Legal Name of Offeror:
Fed ID OR SOC. SEC. NO.:
Date:
Address:
Signature:
Phone: ( )
E-mail address:
Typed or Printed Name, Title
City Procurement Signature
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I. SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS
A. To submit a proposal, access the Submit Online button as part of the RFP description on the City’s Bid
Postings webpage: https://www.lynchburgva.gov/Bids.aspx. All proposals submitted should be uploaded
as a single PDF file and must be submitted by the deadline. Late proposals will not be considered.
Proposals will be stored in a secure folder until after the deadline has passed then accessed by
Procurement staff.
B. Submission of Proprietary Information
Trade secrets or proprietary information submitted by an Offeror in connection with this procurement
transaction shall not be subject to public disclosure under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act;
however, the Offeror must invoke the protection of this section prior to or upon submission of the data or
the materials, and must identify the data or other materials to be protected and state the reason why
protection is necessary. (Section 2.2-4342 F. of the Code of Virginia). Offerors shall submit, in a
separate section of the proposal, any information considered proprietary and any copyrighted
material and clearly identify the information as proprietary and/or copyrighted information.
Offerors may not declare their entire proposal proprietary nor may they declare proposed pricing
to be proprietary. References may be made within the body of the proposal to proprietary information;
however, all information contained within the body of the proposal not in the separate section labeled
proprietary shall be considered Public Information.
C. Proposals having any erasures or corrections must be initialed by the Offeror in ink.
D. The City reserves the right to accept or reject any or all proposals, to waive informalities, and to
reissue any request for proposals and to award contracts to multiple Offerors. Any contract resulting from
this Request for Proposal shall not be exclusive to the successful firm. The City reserves the right to
contract with firms not party to the resultant contract for similar work if it determines this to be in their
best interest.
E. By submitting a proposal, the Offeror agrees that the proposal will not be withdrawn for a period of 90
days following the due date for proposal responses.
F. By submitting a proposal, the Offeror certifies that it has not combined, conspired or agreed to
intentionally rig, alter or otherwise manipulate, or to cause to be rigged, altered or otherwise manipulated
its proposal for the purpose of allocating purchases or sales to or among persons, raising or otherwise
fixing the prices of the goods or services, or excluding other persons from dealing with the City.
G. By submitting a proposal, the Offeror certifies that its proposal is made without collusion or fraud and
that it has not offered or received any kickbacks or inducements from any other Offeror, supplier,
manufacturer or subcontracting firm in connection with its proposal; and that it has not conferred on
any public employee having official responsibility for this procurement transaction any payment, loan,
subscription, advance, deposit of money, services or anything of more than nominal value, present or
promised.
H. Nothing herein is intended to exclude any responsible Offeror or in any way restrain or restrict
competition. All responsible Offerors are encouraged to submit proposals.
I. It is the policy of the City of Lynchburg to maximize participation by minority and women owned
business enterprises in all aspects of City contracting opportunities. The City does not discriminate
against faith-based organizations.
J. The City will not be responsible for any expense incurred by any Offeror in preparing and submitting a
proposal. All proposals submitted will become the property of the City.
K. By submitting a proposal, the Offeror is certifying that Offeror is not currently debarred by the City, or in
a procurement involving federal funds, by the Federal Government. A copy of the City debarment
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procedure in accordance with Section 18.1-10 of the City’s Procurement Ordinance is available upon
request.
II. Purpose
The purpose of this Request for Proposals (RFP) is to obtain proposals from qualified vendors for the
Processing of Daily Mail, Data Processing, Printing, Folding, Inserting, and Bulk Mailing of Specified Bills for
the City of Lynchburg. Vendors will be permitted to sub-contract for the daily mail to be picked up and
delivered to a location and for commingling/pre-sorting/metering services at such location as noted below.
III. Background
The City of Lynchburg has previously contracted the above-mentioned services through BMS Direct, Inc. in
Lynchburg, VA and desires to continue outsourcing them to meet current needs. The current contract expires in
November 2026 and there are no renewal options available.
IV. Scope of Services
A. DATA PROCESSING, PRINTING, FOLDING, INSERTING, & BULK MAILING OF SPECIFIED
BILLS
1. The City of Lynchburg creates either a unique fixed length flat file of data, an XML file, or a PDF for
each billing or form type that is outsourced for printing. The generation of this file is part of an
automated bill run or other process that is performed by customers in various departments. The City
currently uses the following platforms: Tyler Technologies (New World ERP), Catalis, Inc., and other
in-house applications associated with City billing.
2. The file formats, other than PDF, can be one record for an account or multiple records per account.
3. Files that contain multiple records per account can have the same format for each line of data or a
separate “record types” with different data on each of the lines.
4. The length of the file is dependent on the bill type or form type and can range from several
hundred characters to approximately 6,000 characters, with a size range of approx. 60 KB. ‘
5. For the five billing file types (Utility Water Bills, Real Estate, Personal Property, Miscellaneous
Billing, and Miscellaneous Billing Customer Statements), a control record is created that
includes a total number of bills created and a total amount due for all bills. This control record is
used to validate that the printer has received all of the records that are to be printed. As the print
job runs, the printer should be matching their internal control values to the ones supplied by the
City.
6. The billing file and control file are compressed into a single “zip” file.
7. The process that produces the file automatically transmits the “zip” file to a secure FTP site without
intervention of the person who generated the file or without intervention from a computer operations
staff.
8. The vendor must map the data from the fixed length file, or XML file to the City’s pre-designed form. In
some instances, total columns are included as a field in the file and, sometimes, the printer performs
calculations to calculate the total amount based on data in a particular data field or column.
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9. The vendor must be able to filter and segregate some bills from printing based on a column (typically
an account number, but could be some other data field). Sometimes, these bills will not be produced at
all and sometimes they will be printed and returned to the City.
10. The vendor must sort the documents combining like mailing addresses into a single mailing
envelope.
11. Upon receipt of the fixed length flat file, XML file, or PDF file, the printer will perform their processes
to create a proof file to provide back to the City. The printer will provide the proof in an automated
fashion, done either by the printer’s software package, or by allowing a City application to connect to
the printer’s software package to retrieve the proof. Email notifications of job completion should
include the job control totals (number of bills and total amount) from the printing process.
12. The City file originator will review the proof file for accuracy, format, and quality and respond by either
email notification to the vendor, or by use of a vendor portal reporting any problems that need to be
resolved or approval to proceed with printing and mailing the bills or other form types.
13. The vendor must print on 8 ½ X 11” twenty pound bond perforated paper, fold, insert the document,
plus a #9 payment return envelope where applicable, and insert any communication documents into a
#10 double blank window envelope with Return Address Service Requested visible in the top blank
window. The placement of data including the OCR scan line on the payment remit stub is critical to our
ability to process returned payments in an automated scanner environment. The OCR scan line will
contain a modulus 11 check digit.
14. The City will set up and maintain a Postage Escrow Account with the vendor to prepay applicable
postage charges for each job. The vendor must be able to maximize bulk mailing postage rates
under their postal permits with the United States Postal Service. (USPS)
15. The vendor must audit the mailing addresses and correct any format errors in accordance with the USPS
rules for presort bulk mailing. The City requires this to occur prior to sending any bulk mailing to citizens
to have addresses run through the National Change of Address Search process. This is in an effort to
decrease the number of returns and/or incorrect addresses. (The attempt is to update the system of records
prior to mailings being sent.)
16. The vendor will meter the job and deliver the presorted work to the USPS by midnight of the third
workday after the file is released to the vendor. (i.e., Utility Bills are created on Wednesday and
released to the vendor during the afternoon hours. Proofs are sent back to the City within a few hours
and approved or rejected within an hour of transmission. The completed mail is delivered to the USPS
by midnight on Friday. This process repeats every other week throughout the year.)
17. The vendor will provide back to the City a job summary as to the number of bills and total amount of
money billed on each job. The City also requires a report on the number of yellow Cut Off Notices
printed in each job.
18. The vendor must establish internal parameters on each job to accomplish unique features of each job.
(i.e. language/ink coloring on delinquent water bills is made to stand out)
19. The return payment remit stubs cannot have a curl at the top of the form from an improper fold. The OCR
line must measure an exact distance from the bottom of the stub.
20. The vendor must submit itemized invoices including the service date, job description, printer counts,
metered counts, and amount of postage per job. The amount due on the invoice will be for data
processing and print shop services.
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21. The postage charges listed on each invoice will be summarized in a monthly report to the City.
22. The vendor must provide for periodic address validation of the City’s existing billing address files. The
City sends the account number, billing name and address to the printer, they return an Excel spreadsheet
of accounts that need attention. The spreadsheet contains the account number, the address the City has for
the account and the recommended address change based on the NCOA database.
23. Informed Delivery Service – The City would like to begin utilizing a service with tracking capacities
similar to that of Informed Delivery through USPS, which would track every single envelop with a
barcode that would tell City staff if each piece of mail had been delivered, to what address, the date, and
if not, why it was returned (USPS has approx. seven categories) in a format that can then be uploaded to
the GIS dashboards designed for the City.
24. The City has furnished examples of bulk mailings that are necessary. See Attachment B.
B. DAILY OUTGOING MAIL PICKUP AND PROCESSING
1. Picked up and sent as First-Class Mail (commingling/pre-sorting/metering service is required– the
City currently uses such service; the use of a sub-contractor to perform the daily mail pickup and
commingling/pre-sorting/metering service is acceptable to the City)
2. Mail must be picked up daily (Monday – Friday, except Holidays) no sooner than 3:30 p.m. at two
(2) locations, Human Services at 99 9th Street and City Hall at 900 Church Street.
3. Vendor will commingle/pre-sort, meter, seal and deliver all mail to the United States Postal Service
within 24 hours of mail pick up.
4. Vendor will supply forms for each department to attach to bundles of mail for billing purposes.
(samples will be provided to the awarded vendor)
5. One (1) electronic invoice provided in either Excel .xls or .csv format is required for Daily
Outgoing Mail Pickup and Processing. The invoice must be broken down by departments
and include a breakdown of each service charged. Daily Outgoing Mail Pickup and
Processing invoices should be sent directly to the City Finance Department c/o Accounts
Payable. (samples will be provided to the awarded vendor)
6. Vendor shall afford the City all postage savings associated with the bulk metering of
mail. (The City will not accept a vendor or sub-contractor handling daily mail that
passes along full pricing to the City for postage related to daily mail pickup.)
C. GENERAL ITEMS TO NOTE
1. Vendor shall notify the City when a disruption of services is planned or occurs unplanned. For large-scale
system changes such as modifying encryption algorithms, the Service Provider will notify the City at
least one week prior to such change. For planned maintenance and/or upgrades, the vendor will notify
the City at least 24 hours prior to such change. For unforeseen hardware or network failures, the Service
Provider shall notify the City immediately of such disruption in service. All notifications shall include the
type of disruption, anticipated duration, and contact information of a representative of the vendor who is
familiar with the disruption.
2. Vendor shall be SOC II Type II compliant and shall provide their most recent SOC II Type II audit report
from within the past 12 months of operations prior to award of a contract and during any initial or
subsequent contract term as requested by the City. As required by SOC II Type II compliance, vendor
shall have in place an adequate data recovery / business continuity plan capable of complete data
recovery from a different geographical location to protect against regional disaster or catastrophe or in
the event of complete data loss in the local/regional data housing location. Vendor shall include its SOC
II Type II audit report and brief description of their disaster recovery plan with their proposals. This
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