Completion Report

Project Summary:

Summary

The project successfully delivered a signed contract for a solution to replace the existing Tristan system, as planned, to allow the Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies to select the best suited product for their future operational requirements following a robust procurement process.

There were three significant delays in the course of the project which meant that the budget had to absorb extra effort than had been planned:

• Agreement on the business requirements and supplier demonstration scenarios for inclusion in the ITT
• Agreement on the award of the contract
• Agreement of the final contract

The Project Board accepted that the additional time and effort was justified in order to ensure best suited sustainable solution for RDSVS and UoE.

It was agreed by the Project Board that the procurement project could close with confirmation of the contract signing, without the need for the Project Board members to meet to approve.

Deliverables

The project was initiated to procure a new Practice Management System (PMS). The Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies, IS Applications Division and Procurement worked effectively together to specify the business and functional requirements, which formed part of the Invitation To Tender (ITT).

The management deliverables of the project were:

• Establishing the Project Governance arrangements

• Approved procurement strategy

• Published Invitation to Tender document (ITT)

• Contract Notice issued

• Evaluation of ITT supplier responses and supplier demos

• Contract Award to successful supplier

• Ongoing support and maintenance arrangements

• Implementation plan agreed with successful supplier

Other deliverables included:

• Engaged stakeholder community

• Increased awareness of project across the University

The procurement defined the business requirements and evaluation questions which were listed in the Invitation to Tender document (ITT).  The business requirements were categorised under nine functional areas:

• General Clinical

• Clinical Record

• Pharmacy & Stock Control

• Accounts & Finance

• Research

• Management Information

• Easter Bush Pathology

• Dairy Herd Health and Productivity Services

• Diagnostic Imaging

The ITT also defined the following requirements:

• System accessibility and usability

• Implementation and training

• Product development

• Support and maintenance

• Technology

Analysis of Resource Usage:

Staff Usage Estimate: 147 days

Staff Usage Actual: 179 days

Staff Usage Variance: 22%

Explanation for variance:

• The original budget approved for the project was 147 days (split  across two financial years -110 days 2015/16, 140 days 2015/16).
• This was revised in January 2017 with the project estimated as requiring an additional 30 days to complete.
• Of this revised budget
  • the project accommodated additional costs aligned to the requirements for inclusion in the Invitation To Tender (ITT) and development of the Supplier Demonstration Scenarios; approximately 20 days effort was spent in further revisions of the requirements and scenarios before it could be approved by the Project Board. Due to the need to engage further with colleagues within MVM additional Project Management effort was required from IS Applications.
  • there was a significant delay to signoff of the "Award Recommendation" milestone; the project absorbed an estimated additional 40 days effort in order that the Project Board were able to reach agreement on the contract award and the rationale for the decision.
  • after reaching agreement in October 2016 it was hoped that the contract negotiations could be completed in December to allow the implementation to start in January 2017, however an extended period of negotiation with input from the Information Services CIO required additional coordination of clarifications and responses from the 3rd party supplier by the Procurement Manager and the Project Manager to ensure all areas of the contract were fully addressed. This extended negotiation resulted in an additional 9 days effort (mainly PM and Senior Supplier time).
  • although Procurement do not charge time directly to the project, there was an estimated effort of 70 days from the Procurement Managers.

Key Learning Points:

Positive Learning Points

• Although the agreement on requirements took longer than planned, RDVS Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)  were engaged in the process.
• SMEs took ownership of the scenarios, which would subsequently form the basis of a gap analysis for the customisation work for the implementation.
• The selected supplier demonstrated flexibility and the team were able to develop a good initial working relationship; this helped reach a common understanding and prevented major disagreements or overly protracted negotiations.

Recommendations

• Guidance to suppliers regarding demo presentations to further emphasise responsibility to have sufficient, suitably qualified staff to present their proposals.
• Allowing more preparation time for demo scripts and include a final run through prior to issue to suppliers (sense check).
• More specific guidance to suppliers on providing a breakdown of their costs in a way that we require to calculate total cost of ownership over 5 years.
• Review arrangements for printing and couriering of copies of the contract.
• Review of high level requirements for Cloud vs On Premise solutions; templates and SAAS/Cloud terms could help suppliers understand what UoE's thinking is to reduce contract discussion time.
• Review of "standard" non-functional questions; it was acknowledged by some staff who had developed question sets some time ago that several were now no longer relevant; this acknowledgment and review needs to happen as early as possible in the process to prevent delay and ensure confidence that the non-functional areas are adequately covered.
• Adoption of the Major Project Governance Assessment Toolkit was planned but was delayed due to the need to focus effort on a decision on the supplier; if it had been adopted earlier this may have helped to better engage the wider stakeholder groups and addressed some aspects of project communication and helped explain to those not directly involved at each stage why the delays occurred (and why in some cases the reasons could not be shared due to confidentiality and procurement legislation).

Outstanding issues:

• It was agreed at the Project Board meeting 19/01/17 that options for business continuity be carried forward to the implementation project.