Atchison staff selects Conduit Technical Services for multi-part IT upgrade and managed services
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Summary
City staff recommended and the commission authorized staff to negotiate an agreement with Conduit Technical Services (Liberty, Mo.) for cabling, network/security, endpoint migration and an annual managed IT services contract; staff outlined costs and ARPA and ERP budget lines that will cover much of the work.
City staff said they selected Conduit Technical Services of Liberty, Missouri, as their top choice to perform structured cabling, network and security upgrades, endpoint migration and to serve as the city’s managed service provider; the commission authorized staff to negotiate the agreement by voice vote.
Mr. Russell, who led the solicitation, told commissioners the city issued four related RFPs for structured cabling at City Hall, network and security upgrades, endpoint (computer) updates and migration to cloud services, and a managed service provider contract. Staff received 18 proposals across the projects, shortlisted three finalists, invited walkthroughs of city facilities and ranked the finalists after presentations. “City staff unanimously selected Conduit Technical Services of Liberty, Missouri,” Russell said.
Russell provided itemized proposal costs: $22,199.39 for structured cabling, $23,925.80 for network and security upgrades, $48,178 for endpoint upgrades and migration, and $97,500 per year for the managed IT services contract. He told commissioners the structured cabling and part of the endpoint migration were budgeted in ARPA and ERP lines; staff proposed using $32,104 of ARPA funds to cover the remaining upgrade total and said that after these expenditures the ARPA line would still have about $180,000 available for other projects.
Russell said the city currently budgets roughly $50,000 per year for IT services and that staff recommended increasing the budget to $100,000 next year to cover the managed-services contract and improved infrastructure. The commission discussed contract terms, annual appropriations and the year-to-year nature of the agreement; staff said the final agreement will return to the commission with negotiated terms.
Staff indicated the city has about 65 active network users and roughly 50 endpoints (computers, laptops) that will be part of the migration. Russell said cloud migration would shift some systems away from in-house servers to services the city already pays for through Microsoft contracts, improving remote access, backup and reducing the need for frequent server replacements.
Commissioners expressed concerns about cost and cyber risk; Russell said improved security posture was a major factor in the recommendation. The commission voted to authorize staff to negotiate a managed service provider agreement with Conduit Technical Services and to complete the listed upgrade projects; the motion passed on a voice vote.
