Vacancies and opportunities

Request for proposals: website redevelopment

Archived notice. The procurement described here has been completed and is retained for reference.

A request for proposals to redevelop this website: to move the collection onto a structure that holds guidance, research and incident learning together, and that keeps material published under earlier versions of the site reachable.

Scope of work

The work covers the design and build of the site, the migration of existing content, and the definition of the structure that future content will follow. The specific requirements set out in the notice were:

• Structure. A library of guidance and research, a news section, and theme sections that group material cutting across both.
• Document handling. Documents published under earlier versions of the site had to remain available at their original addresses. The structure could not be rebuilt in a way that broke existing references.
• Accessibility. The site had to meet the accepted accessibility standard for public sector and publicly funded sites, including keyboard navigation, sufficient contrast and a readable text size.
• Performance. Pages had to render quickly on the connections that staff actually use in the field, including slow mobile connections.
• Editing. Non-technical staff had to be able to publish a new library item or news item without a developer.
• Search. Full-text search across the collection, and a browsable index of every published document.

What a proposal had to contain

Proposals were assessed on the proposed structure and its treatment of the existing addresses, the approach to accessibility and performance, the plan for migrating content, the timetable, and the cost broken down by phase. References from comparable projects were required.

Proposals that treated the site as a marketing exercise were not considered against the criteria, because the site is a reference collection rather than a shop window.

Outcome

The contract was awarded and the site was rebuilt. Material published under the earlier version of the site is still reachable at its original address, which was the requirement that shaped most of the rest.