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The Board of Water Commissioners for the City of Detroit, Water and Sewerage Department authorizes the Director to approve Amendment 3 to DWSD Contract No. 6003139 (CS- 1929) with WTI Holdings LLC d/b/a Waterfield Technologies for the continued support of the IVR & Payment Transaction System; by adding $2,200,000.00, for an amended total contract amount not-to-exceed $3,965,281.00 and extending the term 3 years for a new term ending 11/30/27. This also authorizes the Director to take such other action as may be necessary to accomplish the intent of this vote.
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Agenda of June 18, 2024
Item No. 2024-103
Proposed Amendment No. 3
Contract No.: 6003139
Contractor: WTI Holdings LLC dba Waterfield Technologies
Address: One West Third St., Suite 1115, Tulsa, OK 74103
Current Contract Amount: $1,765,281.00
Proposed Amendment No. 3 Amount: $2,200,000.00
Proposed New Total Contract Amount: $3,965,281.00
Current Contract Term: 11/19/20 - 11/18/24
Proposed Amendment No. 3 Extension: 11/19/24 - 11/18/27
Proposed New Contract Term: 11/19/20 - 11/18/27
TO: The Honorable
Board of Water Commissioners
City of Detroit, Michigan
FROM: Gary Brown, Director
Detroit Water and Sewerage Department
RE: Proposed Amendment No. 3 to Contract No. 6003139
To add funds and time to the contract to continued support of the IVR & Payment Transaction Systems
WTI Holdings LLC d/b/a Waterfield Technologies
MOTION
Upon recommendation of Marqaicha Welch, Procurement Manager, the Board of Water Commissioners for the City of Detroit, Water and Sewerage Department, authorizes the Director to approve Amendment 3 to DWSD Contract No. 6003139 (CS- 1929) with WTI Holdings LLC d/b/a Waterfield Technologies for the continued support of the IVR & Payment Transaction System; by adding $2,200,000.00, for an amended total contract amount not-to-exceed $3,965,281.00 and extending the term 3 years for a new term ending 11/30/27. This also authorizes the Director to take such other action as may be necessary to accomplish the intent of this vote.
BACKGROUND & JUSTIFICATION
The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) is responsible for the delivery and billing of water, sewer and drainage services throughout the City of Detroit. DWSD currently runs a cloud based call center operation on a 24x7 basis to handle customer questions related to Water or Sewer emergencies, lead service line identification and replacement, payment arrangements, assistance programs, balance inquiry and payment card industry (PCI) data security standard (DSS) compliant bill payment.
DWSD competitively solicited for an integrated software solution that will enable DWSD to operate both inbound and outbound call-center and process PCI compliant payments. The call-center software will integrate telephone (voice), email, web chat, SMS and social media. The system will also be used as a training platform for call-center training and will include workforce management and forecasting capabilities that provides the capability to set schedules and track DWSD customer service agent’s ability to meet or deviate from the schedule, grading of work and adjusting as needed. Waterfield proposed BrightPattern to replace the Zipwire platform. The BrightPattern platform has a supported migration path from DWSD’s current product. This allowed DWSD to migrate in a reduced timeframe from Zipwire to the replacement.
Waterfield proposed, in their RFP response, two options for setting up payment processing while migrating DWSD to BrightPattern. Option 1 was to continue using the current Selectron interactive voice response (IVR) service for payment processing. This had the advantage of speed as this allowed the project to conclude faster and require fewer resources. Option 2 was to replace Selectron with BrightPattern to handle payment processing. This option was lower cost but required a longer implementation timeframe and would have prevented DWSD from migrating before Zipwire was shutdown.
With the BrightPattern platform stable and DWSD successfully moved off of Zipwire, DWSD requested Amendment No. 1 to change the scope of work to implement option 2 in order to save on on-going costs.
When the original contract was taken to BOWC the Contract term stated there were two one-year renewal options. Amendment No. 2 is requested the first one-year extension for a new term end date of 11/18/24.
The Proposed Amendment No. 3 is requesting funding and an extension of time to cover usage, workforce management and call/email queue enhancements for better customer service.
PROCUREMENT METHOD
The Contract was procured through a Request for Proposals (RFP) per Requisition #481436, which was approved on 6/11/20. The RFP was advertised on the Michigan Inter-Governmental Trade Network (MITN) website for 29 calendar days. MITN published this opportunity to 245 companies and 47 firms downloaded the RFP package.
The Technical Proposals were evaluated by Procurement for responsiveness, and all were deemed responsive. Then, each member of the Core Evaluation Committee independently reviewed and scored all seven proposals in accordance with the DWSD Procurement Policy. These scores were used to short list the Proposers to determine who would move on to presenting demos of their proposed platforms.
The top three Proposers were requested to present the demo of their proposed solution to both the core and secondary evaluation committee teams. The highest ranked Proposer, WTI Holdings LLC. Inc. dba Waterfield Technologies (Waterfield) was selected to negotiate the final terms, conditions and scope of work. Negotiations were conducted virtually on 10/8/20 and 10/14/20, 10/21/20 and 10/26/20 to finalize terms, conditions and phases of implementation.
Amendment No. 1 was submitted through requisition #494468 which was approved by Budget on 2/7/22. This Amendment requested to modify the statement of work by implementing option 2, the migration of BrightPattern.
Amendment No. 2 was submitted through requisition #514233, which was approved by Budget on 11/29/23. This Amendment requests to extend time through 11/18/24. There will be no change in scope, terms and conditions or the not-to-exceed contract amount. The delay in processing this amendment was due to the vendor obtaining current clearances.
Proposed Amendment No. 3 was submitted through requisition #520213, which was approved by Budget on 5/7/24. This Amendment requests to add $2,200,000 and to extend time through 11/18/27. There will be no change in scope or the terms and conditions.
Waterfield’s clearances expire 3/13/25 and a formal amended contract has been sent to the vendor for signature.
SUMMARY
A. Contract No.: 6003139 (CS-1929)
B. Initial Contract Amount: $1,765,281
C. Proposed Amendment No. 3 Amount: $2,200,000
D. Proposed New Total Contract Amount: $3,965,281
E. Original Contract Term: 11/19/20 - 11/18/23 (three years)
F. Amendment No. 2 Extension: 11/19/23 - 11/18/24 (one year)
G. Proposed Amendment No. 3 Extension: 11/19/24 - 11/18/27 (three years)
H. Proposed New Contract Term: 11/19/20 - 11/18/27
I. Funding Source: I&E Funds
J. GL String(s):
5720-20168-483301-622302-000205-10790-0000-000000 - 38.2% Water
5820-20179-493301-622302-000226-15805-0000-000000 - 61.8 % Sewer
K. Projected Fiscal Year (FY) Contract Expenditures:
FY 24/25: $1,000,000
FY 25/26: $600,000
FY 26/27: $600,000
This proposed amendment was presented to the DWSD Finance Sub Committee on June 5, 2024. Per the DWSD Procurement Policy, this will also be sent for Mayoral review and approval.