City of Oakland RFP for Fleet Management System Part 1. Answers to questions received before the pre-proposal meeting (July 17, 2003) but after 11:30 am on July 16, 2003 Note: Time constraints did not allow these questions to be answered at the preproposal meeting. They are answered here. 1. Is it the intent of the city to obtain a customized software package or are you anticipating an off the shelf package? The City's intent is to obtain a Fleet Management System that best meets our needs (see the Evaluation Criteria, page 18 of the RFP). The City's preference is for an off the shelf package rather than something built from scratch to meet the City's needs. 2. If a vendor does not have established joint ventures or consulting arrangements with Oakland based firms, will the vendor be eliminated from consideration? No. 3. Since the city's vision is for web enabled applications, is there a web services strategy in place? If so, please explain. The City of Oakland is interested in a best of breed Fleet Management System application that meets the requirements specified in the RFP. The Web requirements are specified in the Requirements Matrix of the RFP. 4. Because [vendor] is a closely held private corporation, we are not required to have audited financials. Will the city accept annual financial statements and financial statements from the bank? As answered in Question 3 on the Q and A distributed at the pre-proposal meeting, in your particular circumstance, this alternative is acceptable. However, the City may request additional financial reports and information at a later stage in the evaluation process. 5. Does the city require automation of journal transactions into the Oracle Financial System? Yes. 6. Will interface into the city's Oracle financial system drive the decision to implement the vendor software using Oracle? It will be a significant factor; however, the City will consider Fleet Management Systems that run on Oracle or MS SQL. Page 1 of 6
7. What is your database preference - Oracle or MS SQL? The City will consider Fleet Management Systems that run on Oracle or MS SQL. 8. Please explain the conversion/audit trail. Is data available in ASCI format? The City needs documentation that all the data that was converted from the old system has successfully been converted and migrated into the new system. There should be a log of all the data files that are transferred and any exception or errors should be noted if not corrected. See Question 31, below, for information about the data. 9. If the city's current information in Oracle is not accurate, how does the city anticipate accuracy in the new fleet system? As a stage of the implementation, the inventory items that are not in Oracle need to be added, and City staff will provide updated counts for inventory items, so that the starting point of the new system will be accurate data. 10. How many vehicles are in the city Motor Pool? Approximately 1,600 vehicles, as well as an additional 210 pieces of assorted mechanical equipment are in the fleet. Pool vehicles account for 60 of the total. Note: The following questions (11-24) are taken from the Features and Requirements section of the RFP. 11. Section 1.13 - What are edit masks? The intention is that if someone types, for example, 5105551212, the system displays the information as (510) 555-1212. 12. Section 2.02 - How do you envision the usage codes to be provided for acquisitions, purchase orders, disposal, depreciation, billing and equipment? Could you provide a specific example of the way this is currently utilized? The items listed above need to be tracked. Usage codes may have been an inappropriate term. 13. Section 4.05 - How do you envision the customer satisfaction survey to tie into a specific work order in aggregate? Show results either (1) for the satisfaction of the customer for a given work order, or (2) to show the average/high/low/etc. satisfaction of all customers for all work orders completed by a particular shop, equipment class, etc. This would allow management, for example, to determine if customers driving street sweepers are significantly more or less happy than customers driving police cars. The option for the manager to then drill down from the high-level Page 2 of 6
overview to see what the satisfaction was on individual work orders that were compiled into the aggregate would be helpful in interpreting the results. 14. Section 5.17 - Please define work requests. This item is redundant with 5.16 and can be eliminated. 15. Section 5.18 - Please define the ability to cancel. Are you referring to deletion or the ability to change status upon the completion of work? For example, if a work order is created to add a toolbox to a truck, but then the customer changes her mind and does not want the toolbox, the system would have the ability to cancel the work order (mark it canceled, not completed or deferred or in progress or any other status), and have a record that the work order was created but the status was changed to canceled. 16. Section 5.28 - Are multiple work centers the same as multiple repair shops? No. A work center is a location, and contains multiple repair shops. For example, Building 5 is a work center that has repair shops such as body shop, auto shop, and small equipment. 5050 Coliseum Way is a work center that has repair shops for sweepers, trucks and fire, and construction. 17. Section 10.02 - Please define commodity. A commodity is a category, and generally contains many part numbers. For example, tire can be a commodity, but there are part numbers for different sizes and types of tires. There can be commodities and sub-commodities. For example, a part number that begins with 060 is auto parts (a commodity), the next digits are 71, indicating Ford (a sub-commodity), and the remaining numbers would indicate a particular part. 18. Section 10.19 - Please clarify your definition of stock replenishment reports. This report lists commodity, quantity needed, and cost for stock items, based on min/max levels. 19. Section 10.21 - How do you envision the ability to show prior cost on any given part? The goal here is if we are about to order a widget for $100, and previously we paid $50, the system or user would flag it as a potentially incorrect entry. One way this could be done would be when we enter a part number, a field displays with the prior price paid for the part, so that we can estimate what purchasing more of these parts will cost. Ideally, the last several costs and weighted average would be readily visible, so that staff can assess whether prices are trending up or down. Page 3 of 6
20. Section 10.34 - What do you mean by count cards? These are physical cards that list the part number, description, location, etc. to assist with doing counts of items on hand in the parts rooms, for inventory purposes. 21. Section 10.41 - Please clarify your definition of inventory price status reporting. This is a report of the mean cost of an inventory item over a specific period of time; e.g., monthly, bi-annually, annually. 22. Section 10.60 - What is average weighted? If there are 10 widgets, and two cost $10, three cost $11.50, and five cost $13, the average weighted price is (2x10.00)+(3x11.50)+(5x13.00) divided by 10 equals $11.95. This would be a calculation method applied to one part number or an aggregate of part numbers, including the entire inventory at a location. 23. Section 12.52 - Please clarify your definition of revenue by shop and mechanic. The Equipment Services Division charges and has costs associated with the services it delivers. There are two locations and several shops (heavy equipment, small equipment, motorcycle, body, etc.). Management would like to determine how much revenue it receives from the work done at each shop. (Cost is important too, so that a profit or lack thereof can be calculated.) Similarly, management would like to determine the revenue associated with types of mechanics, to better understand cost structures. 24. Section 12.61 - What do you mean by vendor inventory catalogs? For a given vendor, what parts can be purchased from them; for a given part number, what vendors carry that part. 25. [City Council President] Ignacio De La Fuente is proposing a new [GPSbased] tracking system [does the RFP] encompass the issue referenced above, or is it an entirely separate issue? [also asked at preproposal meeting] It is an entirely separate issue. Part 2. Answers to questions received at the pre-proposal meeting 26. Are the City of Oakland and Port of Oakland LBE and SLBE certifications the same? No. Contact Vivian Inman at (510) 238-6261 to be certified with the City of Oakland. Certification lasts 2 years. Page 4 of 6
27. Do you have an approved budget, and if so, how much? Funds have been reserved for this project. The amount budgeted will depend on negotiations with the successful Respondent. 28. Do you have a preference for a web-enabled or client/server based application? As stated on page 7 of the RFP, The City s vision is for web-enabled applications. This includes accessing information through a client browser s interface and having the ability to publish reports onto a user intranet site for ease of retrieval. The City has, and will continue to deploy, client/server based applications in the interim. As shown on page 1 of the Fleet Management System Features and Requirements Matrix, a Browser-based interface, so that client software does not need to be installed on each machine is a Priority (not Core) feature that is necessary for enhancing the City s business practices. 29. What is the current state of the Fleet Management System? The HTE system on the AS400 is used only to keep track of what vehicles are in the fleet and what their characteristics are. See page 5 of the RFP for additional information. 30. How much historical data from the current Fleet Management System will be brought into the new Fleet Management System? Only the vehicle number and description information that is currently kept in HTE on the AS400. See page 5 of the RFP for additional information. 31. Can we see a sample of the data elements? Please see the file equip inventory file layout.doc, which has information about some of the fields used by the HTE system. Also see the file sample.csv, which shows our records for five sample vehicles. (Note that the license number and VIN number have been removed from this sample file.) The City may not need the data associated with all of these fields to be imported. The City may want to import some additional fields that are in the HTE system but not listed in these two files. Overall, the two files provide a good sense of the vehicle information that the City requires to be transferred to the new Fleet Management System. 32. What type of equipment information associated with a vehicle is kept? See the files provided in conjunction with answer #31 above. 33. Can a prime contractor be a system integrator, as opposed to a hardware/software vendor? The RFP does not exclude this possibility. Note the criteria that the Respondent will have to meet, for example on page 11 of the RFP. Page 5 of 6
34. What fuel management system do you currently use? As stated on page 5 of the RFP, the City currently uses, and will require a successful interface with, Rapac Network International (RNI) Fuel System 2000. 35. The evaluation criteria (page 18 of the RFP) states that 55 points will be weighted for functionality. Will there be penalties for too much customization? The City s preference is for out-of-the-box software that is installed and operational at other sites and can be demonstrated to the City at the time the proposal is submitted (code O ). Requirements that can be met by major modifications to existing software or custom software development (code M ) are not preferred. The City has not established a threshold requirement for an acceptable level of code M (or U or S or X ) responses. The cost proposal must include costs for customizations, programming, etc. to meet the City s needs. The Respondent may use line items to indicate the cost to deliver individual features and requirements. 36. What is the implementation timeline for this project? The City is asking Respondents to provide a Timeline and Work Breakdown (page 16 of the RFP). The timeline will be negotiated with the successful Respondent. The City does not have an absolute deadline for implementation. 37. Does data conversion services include data cleaning? Very little existing data will be brought into the new Fleet Management System. The City anticipates doing most or all data cleaning in-house as part of the implementation. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- City of Oakland Fleet Management Request for Proposals General and technical questions regarding this RFP must be submitted via email to fleetmanagementrfp@oaklandnet.com. Pre-proposal meeting: July 17, 2003. All questions submitted before this date will be answered at the pre-proposal meeting or within 5 working days after the preproposal meeting. All questions are due by July 25, 2003. Written responses to questions received at or before the pre-proposal meeting will be provided to all parties who have provided valid email addresses to fleetmanagementrfp@oaklandnet.com by the end of the pre-proposal meeting, and will be posted online at http://www.oaklandnet.com/oit/rfplinks.htm. The email/posting will be done by the end of July 24, 2003 Written responses to additional questions received by July 25, 2003 will be emailed and posted online by the end of August 1, 2003. Page 6 of 6