Alameda County, CA holds RFP procurement for county-wide copier-printers

Alameda County, CA recently issued an RFP for “countywide-copiers”. The original deadline for responses was December 5^th, but, apparently, the county issued an addendum to change the response date to December 14^th.

I’m posting about this RFP opportunity not so that reprographers can get involved in this opportunity, but because RFP’s like this one are great homework (study) assignments for those of you who are interested in learning more about MPS type deals. This particular RFP calls for approximately 435 copier/printers (multi-function units) to be placed over a period of 3 years (as existing leases expire), and, apparently, the deal will be in effect (unless cancelled early) for 6 years. Also, the County, evidently, has called for a “cost-per-copy” pricing program, everything included (soup to nuts.)

Quite frankly, most “reprographers” would not be qualified to participate in this RFP, and that’s because of the “qualification requirements” included in the RFP document. Here they are, just as an FYI….

VENDOR QUALIFICATIONS

1. Bidder shall be regularly and continuously engaged in the business of supplying, deploying, supporting and handling at the end-of-service-life, copiers to customers of comparable size to the County for at least three (3) years.

2. Bidder shall be a certified manufacturer or reseller of multifunction device copiers.

3. Bidder shall demonstrate successfully implementing paper and energy use reduction programs associated with copier consolidation in prior or existing accounts.

4. Bidder shall possess all permits, licenses and professional credentials necessary to supply product and perform services as specified under this RFP.

Okay, here’s the face page of the RFP:

COUNTY OF ALAMEDA

REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL No. 900882

SPECIFICATIONS, TERMS & CONDITIONS

for

Countywide Multifunction Device Copiers

NETWORKING/BIDDERS CONFERENCES

at

2:00 p.m. on November 9, 2011 at Castro Valley Library 3600 Norbridge Avenue Canyon Room Castro Valley, CA 94546

2:00 p.m. on November 10, 2011 at General Services Agency 1401 Lakeside Drive Room 1107, 11th Floor Oakland, CA 94612

For complete information regarding this project see RFP posted at http://www.acgov.org/gsa_app/gsa/purchasing/bid_content/contractopportunities.jsp or contact the person listed below. Thank you for your interest!

Contact Person: Jennifer Chan Ngo, Contracts Specialist II

Phone Number: (510) 208-9604

E-mail Address: jennifer.ngo@acgov.org

RESPONSE DUE

by

2:00 p.m.

on

December 5, 2011

at

Alameda County, GSA-Purchasing

1401 Lakeside Drive, Suite 907

Oakland, CA 94612

DUE DATE CHANGED TO 12/14/11

And, here’s a link that will take you to a copy of the RFP document that I placed in my Google Docs library. (For reference purposes only; if you are a proposer, go directly to Alameda County’s site for all documents.)

http://tinyurl.com/bwgtqhd

For those of you who are serious about the homework and study you do, the next step for you would be to follow this RFP procurement to its conclusion. I suspect that all of the major copier/printer manufacturers in in the U.S. will participate in this RFP. Your further homework should include a letter to the County’s purchasing department requesting copies of the Proposals submitted by each proposer. Once you have copies of all of the proposals, you can read through them to learn a) what they said in their proposal, b) the pricing offered by each proposer. Also, visit the County’s web-site to see which proposer was awarded the deal.