The City of Seattle’s IT Department has released a Request for Information (RFI) to help the city “validate its business requirements, approach, and priorities” for a new Project Portfolio Management System (PPM) to support the Accounting and Budget Services (ABS) and Capital Development (CD) Divisions in the Finance and Administrative Services Department (FAS).
The city noted in the RFI that the CD Division manages construction, maintenance, and urban development projects for City of Seattle buildings, and the ABS Division oversees the financial aspects of the CD projects.
The RFI explains that the project team has already developed business requirements and is interested in gathering new perspectives on best practices for PPM systems, with “fresh ideas” on how current technology solutions can help the IT Department fulfill its project scope and objectives. The city further noted that the PPM system will be used by ABS and CD program managers and project managers, supervisors, budgeting specialists, and project control staff. According to the city, a successful product match will support the needs of these user groups in the full cycle of portfolio, program and project management.
The RFI includes the high-level requirements for the FAS PPM, broken down into nine priority areas.
Portfolio Management:
- Ability to roll up project schedule, resource and budget data to the program and portfolio level;
- Up to multi-year program and project projections;
- Time-based project budget breakdown;
- Capture pre-project ideas with ranking options; and
- Track variance from cost and schedule baselines across portfolio.
Programs:
- Ability to roll up project schedule, resource and budget data to the program level;
- Manage program and project funding and staffing allocation; and
- Track variance from cost and schedule baselines for project within the program.
Project:
- Manage and track all phases of the project lifecycle;
- Schedule and budget estimation, what-if analysis, baseline creation;
- Cost loaded schedules with multi-year projections;
- Budget and schedule templates; and
- Link contract vendor with requisition, purchase order, spend down.
Resources:
- Varying level of access privileges, driven by role;
- Ability to calculate hourly rates;
- Add/view/modify resource classes and categories;
- Record key project roles and assignments;
- Provide resource capacity and demand; and
- Track labor planned and actuals.
Workflow:
- Custom forms and automated workflows; and
- Workflow within and outside of PPM system.
Reporting:
- Canned and customizable reports and dashboards;
- Integrate with Excel, Tableau, PowerBI;
- Integrate with Peoplesoft for actuals and contract information; and
- Integrate with MS Project.
Technical
- Single sign-on capability;
- Software as a Service – hosted by the vendor; and
- Audit trail tracking.
Accessibility and Ease of Use
- Support for training and onboarding;
- Ongoing training support after go live; and
- Follows industry best practices for out of the box workflows and terminology.
Interested parties are asked to submit a “concise” paper that describes the submitter’s system, its features, and special characteristics. Additionally, interested parties are asked to provide how their system meets or does not meet the city’s requirements. Submissions must also include system hosting options, including whether it would be hosted in the cloud, on prem, internally hosted, externally hosted. The city is also interested in hearing examples of successful implementations and contracts from other locations and jurisdictions. Submissions must also include annual licensing cost for 35 users with full access and information on approved implementation partners.
The deadline to submit questions is July 20 and the deadline for submissions is July 21.
