Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement Software

Agency:	City of Berkeley
State:	California
Type of Government:	State & Local
Category:	70 - General Purpose Information Technology Equipment (including software). H - Quality Control, Testing, and Inspection Services
Posted:	Nov 2, 2023
Due:	Dec 7, 2023
Solicitation No:	24-11628-C
Publication URL:	To access bid details, please log in.

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Finance Department

General Services Division

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS (RFP)

Specification No. 24-11628-C

FOR

Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement Software

PROPOSALS WILL NOT BE OPENED AND READ PUBLICLY

Dear Proposer:

The City of Berkeley is soliciting written proposals from qualified firms or individuals for Housing Inspection and Code

Enforcement Software. As a Request for Proposal (RFP) this is not an invitation to bid and although price is very important,

other factors will be taken into consideration.

The project scope, content of proposal, and vendor selection process are summarized in the RFP (attached). Proposals must be

received no later than 2:00 pm, on Thursday, Dec 7, 2023. Proposals are to be sent via email with the “Specification No.

24-11628-C and Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement Software” clearly indicated in the subject line of the email.

Please submit one (1) PDF of the technical Proposal with the filename saved as, “Proposal Vendor Name - 24-11628-C

Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement Software.” Corresponding pricing proposal shall be submitted as a separate

document with the filename saved as, “Pricing Vendor Name - 24-11628-C Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement

Software.”

Email Proposals to:

City of Berkeley

Finance Department/General Services Division

purchasing@berkeleyca.gov

Proposals will not be accepted after the date and time stated above. Incomplete proposal or proposals that do not conform to the

requirements specified herein will not be considered. Issuance of the RFP does not obligate the City to award a contract, nor is

the City liable for any costs incurred by the proposer in the preparation and submittal of proposals for the subject work. The

City retains the right to award all or parts of this contract to several bidders, to not select any bidders, and/or to re-solicit

proposals. The act of submitting a proposal is a declaration that the proposer has read the RFP and understands all the

requirements and conditions.

For questions concerning the anticipated work, or scope of the project, please contact Jenny McNulty, Resilient Buildings

Program Manager, via email at jmcnulty@berkeleyca.gov no later than Nov 17, 2023. Answers to questions will not be

provided by telephone or email. Answers to all questions or any addenda will be posted on the City of Berkeley’s site at Bid &

Proposal Opportunities | City of Berkeley (berkeleyca.gov). It is the vendor’s responsibility to check this site. For general

questions concerning the submittal process, contact purchasing at 510-981-7320.

We look forward to receiving and reviewing your proposal.

Sincerely,

Darryl Sweet

General Services Manager

2180 Milvia Street, Berkeley, CA 94704 Tel: 510.981.7320 TDD: 510.981.6903

E-mail: purchasing@berkeleyca.org Website: cityofberkeley.info/finance/

City of Berkeley

Specification No. 24-11628-C

Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement Software

INTRODUCTION

Page 2 of 34

Release Date 11/1/23

Summary

The City of Berkeley is soliciting proposals from qualified companies to provide cloud-based government software

for code enforcement and proactive housing inspections that meet the requirements identified in this RFP.

The Rental Housing Safety Program (RHSP), in the Building and Safety Division, performs proactive and

complaint-based housing inspections. The RHSP is seeking to replace its current systems, the Accela Housing

Module and the Miscellaneous Receivables (MR) Module in FUND$ (AS-400) with a “New System” that will

increase the efficiency of inspections and include online payments.

The New System will be used for billing and payments. The software will include an online public portal, will

allow for management of contact information and have functionality for citation issuance. The New System will

provide for processing both reactive and proactive cases and will provide access and functionality to inspectors in

the field. The New System will include a high functioning app that can be used offline and synched.

The City requires that any proposal for a new system include professional services, cloud-based platform hosting

and ongoing maintenance and support.

Background

Billing and Payments

RHSP bills for three primary fees, currently using the FUND$ MR module.

1. Flat fees per unit/room are billed once per year, with two subsequent invoices sent with penalty fees

applied.

2. Inspection service fees are billed monthly until paid. Penalty fees are added on late payments.

3. Citations are billed monthly until paid. No penalties fees are assessed.

Unpaid fees are added as special assessment tax liens to property tax bills.

Inspections

The Rental Housing Safety Program performs reactive and proactive inspections. Reactive inspections are

performed in response to tenant or owner requests for service. Currently, properties are selected randomly for

proactive inspections. Once all properties have been inspected, the RHSP will change to a process where all units

are inspected on a cyclical basis, based on the last inspection date.

City of Berkeley

Specification No. 24-11628-C

Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement Software

Page 3 of 34

Release Date 11/1/23

II. SCOPE OF SERVICES

The City seeks a solution that will provide for process improvement and that has the flexibility and capability to meet

current and future business functions. Vendors should prepare their proposals based on addressing the requirements

that are listed in the following exhibits:

 Exhibit J – Functional and Technical Requirements

 Exhibit K – Report Specification

 Exhibit L – Interface Specification

 Exhibit M – Data Migration Requirements

The City reserves the right to negotiate changes (including additions and deletions) to this list of functionalities as

the scope and cost of the project evolves. It is the City’s intent to adopt industry best practices and standards wherever

feasible in order to minimize the customization and configuration that is required to implement and maintain various

components of the New Software.

The vendor selected as a result of this RFP must be prepared to begin work immediately upon contract

execution. The term of the contract will be five years. The maximum implementation time from work start to Go-

Live should not exceed one year.

Implementation Services and Deliverables

To ensure quality throughout the implementation, the Project will include, at minimum, the following

services and associated deliverables. Each deliverable will be the responsibility of the vendor and will be formally

presented to the City for review and sign off. For milestones with multiple phases, each phase is expected to contain

each deliverable (unless noted otherwise).

1. Comprehensive Project Plan (to be created and tracked by Provider’s Project Manager)

a. Project Implementation Plan: Detailed listing of phases, tasks and subtasks for the entire

Project that include: start and completion dates, key milestones, responsibilities, critical path,

dependencies and predecessors. Tasks to include all implementation activities, deadlines,

milestones, draft deliverables, review periods, final deliverables and sign-offs including

tools and methodology.

b. Requirements Development and Management Plan

c. Role and Responsibilities including Escalation

d. Communication Plan

e. Risk Management Plan

f. Change Management Plan

g. Ongoing Communication, Coordination, and Project Status Reports

h. Administrator and End User Training Plan

i. Post Go Live and Support Plan

j. On-going End User Training

2. Technical Infrastructure Design and Implementation Plan

To be created by a Provider design team that is an expert in the product that can recommend best practices for a

municipality and implement in accordance with the City’s requirements. Design for each of the (1) production and

(2) non-production environments proposed by the Vendor,

containing at a minimum detailed information on:

a. Methodology, tools, procedures, activities, and services for infrastructure installation, configuration and

change

b. Describe the SaaS server systems including application servers, database servers, web servers, and mobile

app servers that will service the City of Berkeley. Describe whether these servers will be shared between

multiple agencies, and if so, how many. Provide metrics supporting that the server resources will be

sufficient to support service for the City of Berkeley with up to a half dozen Housing Inspectors in the field

City of Berkeley

Specification No. 24-11628-C

Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement Software

Page 4 of 34

Release Date 11/1/23

and a similar number of office staff using the New System at any one time, plus several simultaneous

interactions with the public through a web portal.

c. Software bill of materials including system software, application software, middleware and

databases

d. Security infrastructure and services (identify, protective, monitoring/detective, and

failure responsive/recovery)

e. Data warehouse and reporting requirements

f. Availability, flexibility, and growth requirements

g. System Database Schema or Data Dictionary

h. Roles and Permissions Architecture Documentation

i. Administration documentation for Berkeley system managers including staff user account and permissions

setting procedures and public user account and access setting procedures.

j. System Integration Standards

3. System Design Document: Work product that identifies both business process decisions as

well as system configuration decisions for each in scope business process and system feature

adopting industry best practices and standards.

4. System Configuration, Data Migration, Report Building, and Integration

Configuration is to be implemented by a Provider configuration team that is expert in the Provider’s product. Data

migration is to be implemented by a team expert in data migration from third party software into the Provider’s

product and will include migration from the City’s historical data with data clean-up where appropriate. Integration

with third party software is to be implemented by a Provider integration team that is expert in integration with the

third-party software to be integrated as well as the Provider’s product. See the Business Requirements for

integration and data migration specifics.

a. System Installation and Configuration

b. Data Conversion / Migration tools, methodology, experience with conversion,

recommendation for data to be converted

c. Data mapping for source and destination at table and field level documents for converted

data including any business logic for conversion (Please see Exhibit N Process Maps.)

d. Clearly document what data is not being converted from source system. (Please see Exhibit N Process

Maps.)

e. Report Implementation and Development (as required) Exhibit K

f. Inventory of existing reports in legacy systems and migration plan

g. Robust Application Program Integration with at a minimum integration with software as

identified in the Interfaces list (Exhibit L)

h. Report Building – Provider shall help the City customize reports to meet the City’s business needs as

necessary as specified in the Business Requirements. Currently Rental Housing Safety staff use 33 custom

reports built in Microsoft SSRS format to meet the needs specified in the Business Requirements section.

The Provider may use any report format that meets the requirements with output to PDF for most reports.

5. Testing

a. Test Plans

b. User Acceptance Testing:

i. Develop UAT test scripts based on the functional requirements and system design

document that require successful completion of each item in scope (functional / technical

requirements) and the set-up of the system (system configuration)

c. User Acceptance Plan

d. UAT sign off from business to trigger milestone payments

e. Pre-production security testing

f. Post production security testing

City of Berkeley

Specification No. 24-11628-C

Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement Software

Page 5 of 34

Release Date 11/1/23

6. Go Live Plan

a. Complete set of activities required for Go-Live including Go-Live and Post Go-Live support

b. Activities to include resource names and dependencies

c. Operational runbook –

i. Daily application and infrastructure operations (activities, SLAs);

ii. Application and infrastructure troubleshooting and escalation procedures, contacts and SLAs;

iii. Security operations.

7. Training

A Provider training team shall train both administrators of the system as well as end users, including inspectors and

administrative staff. Please include the number of hours dedicated for training in the proposal. (There will be

approximately 15 users with additional staff having view access.)

a. System Administration documentation and training:

i. Complete system manual for how to use the configured system

ii. Carryout disaster recovery

iii. Resources and process for disaster recovery services

iv. System administration documentation for configurations

b. Role-based End User documentation such as user guides and training

c. Approach: Type of trainings provided – Hands On, Onsite, Virtual

d. Documentation provided: Training manuals, videos for future use

8. Go Live and Post Go Live Implementation Support

A Provider support team shall provide cutover support during go live for a minimum of 24 hours, or until all major

cutover problems are resolved. Cutover support should provide resources both in the one City office and in the field

with at least one Housing Inspector. Post Go-Live support to be estimated and documented:

a. Vendor Resources: Roles, Responsibilities, Average Estimated Time per Month

b. City resources: Roles, Responsibilities, Average Estimated Time per Month

9. Ongoing Software Maintenance and Support - Support services offered and recommended including but not

limited to:

a. System Administration – remote performance monitoring, tuning, loading of patches and

version releases, etc.

b. User Support – hours of service, average/guaranteed response time, ticketing system used,

resources available, escalation process

c. System Enhancements – approach to user enhancement requests

d. Hosting or Cloud Services

e. Online Training / Library resources

f. System Back-up, Redundancy, Disaster Recovery Services

Three (3) Environments

Implementation and hosting services to be provided for three (3) environments: Production, Test and Development.

Post Go Live Health Check

Proposal to include a visit from the Provider four (4) months after go live to check in on the City’s use of the

system, provide recommendation for adjustments, make the adjustments (if necessary), configure additional reports,

and provide 15 hours of refresher training. This post Go Live visit shall include two weeks of full-time engagement

by Provider staff capable of expertly providing configuration changes and adjustments to the New System as

needed and leading the refresher training.

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Housing Inspection and Code Enforcement Software

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