In 2019, the Community Investment Team which consists of several different groups in the City including Engineering, Public Works, Facilities, Park Planning, Budget, Accounting, Contract Management and Technical Services identified several gaps in current software capabilities and processes related to running the City’s Community Investment Program (CIP) consisting of nearly $400M across 120 projects. Each group utilized different individual software applications such as Microsoft Access, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel to manage and report on CIP projects. All members identified a need to manage the CIP under one program, a project and construction management software with integrations into budgeting and accounting applications to provide needed efficiencies and accuracy of management and reporting. Staff determined to request proposals from software vendors that could:
a. Maintain a single source of project information and documentation. Stop duplicative entry of data in different fields.
b. Collaborate with City and Contractor representatives on specific projects (e.g. Engineering Design Consultant, Construction Firm, Materials Lab Testing Firm, City inspectors, City Project Managers, Utility representatives, land acquisition representatives, Consultants, Railroads, Dallas Area Rapid Transit (DART), Texas Historical Commission, and other regional entities).
c. Limit manual processes and paper documentation, while capturing and storing all pertinent information.
d. Ensure City staff has immediate access to data to efficiently manage projects.
e. Enhance reporting capabilities, accuracy, and accessibility by utilizing dashboards and reporting functionality to monitor and report project and program status for various audiences.
f. Capture historical cost and pricing data that can be leveraged for future project cost and price estimation.
g. Ensure all the City’s historical data is migrated from the legacy system(s) into the vendor’s application software. (Current Environment is MS Access Database)
The evaluation committee represented all departments that would be users of the system and evaluated the eleven proposals received. After considering all evaluation criteria and cost, five (5) vendors were invited to present a demonstration of their system. At the completion of the demonstrations, the committee determined that Aurigo is the best value for the City. The committee’s recommendation is based on that the Aurigo software platform provides a robust and expandable module that improves all aspects of project and construction management. The Aurigo platform will support the City as it manages its portfolio of CIP projects across multiple departments. It will automate many of the time consuming, manual processes and allow project managers to focus their energies on management versus data entry. The solution will be integrated with different applications providing efficiencies to the City, such as, real time updates, capturing historical information, etc.
Staff recommends award of this RFP to Aurigo Software Technologies, Inc. in the total estimated contract amount of $2,700,840.
If this contract is not awarded, project and construction management functions performed by numerous city departments will continue to function with out of date and/or obsolete software packages utilizing manual entry to organize, manage and report on the status of a growing number of projects, and the program as a whole. This will affect the entire project program planning, budgeting, management, and organization, resulting in potential inaccuracies, inefficiencies, and project and program management that does not meet our expectation of excellence.