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City IT leaders recommend $30.6 million multi‑vendor contract for infrastructure consulting
Summary
City IT officials recommended awarding a multi‑vendor professional services contract to three firms after a 23‑proposal RFP; the projected spend is $30,558,507.50 over a potential five‑year term and includes an 18.64% MWBE goal. Council members raised questions about departmental allocations and procurement review.
City technology officials on Wednesday asked the Government Operations Committee to approve a recommended multi‑vendor award for IT professional and consulting services, saying the contracts would bolster citywide infrastructure resilience and speed technical response times. "This multi‑vendor award is proposed to help us strengthen our services across the city," said Bert Corford, deputy chief information officer, during the committee presentation.
The recommendation follows an RFP that drew 23 proposals. Lisa Kent, the city's chief information officer, said evaluation included members from the Houston Information Technology Services (HITS) division, Public Works and the Houston Police Department. Corford described the evaluation as 75 points for technical competence and 25 points for price, with pass/fail checks for responsiveness, responsibility and financial stability. "They had to provide oral presentations to the evaluation committee, and they had to submit their best and final offer," Corford said.
Corford told the committee the team recommended three firms: Balwan CyberTech Inc, CST Corporation and Netsync Network Solutions. The proposed contract term is three years with two one‑year optional renewals, for a potential five‑year total. The projected citywide spend is $30,558,507.50; Corford said funding would come from a mix of revolving funds (about $20.2 million), enterprise or revenue funds (about $9.61 million), grant funds ($659,000) and a small general‑fund contribution ($85,000).
The RFP set an MWBE participation target of 18.64 percent; two vendors met that goal and one raised its projected MWBE participation to approximately 20 percent, Corford said. Committee members asked for clarity on departmental allocations and how the evaluation committee reviewed prior performance and financial disclosures. Corford described the responsibility review as including past performance checks and the requirement that proposers disclose any liabilities that could affect contract performance.
Kent and Corford said the contract would cover a broad scope of infrastructure services, including end‑user support, active directory and identity management, IP management, data center storage and server services, network and telephony services and help‑desk operations. Corford said service operations under the contract would include incident, change and problem management and a root‑cause analysis approach to reduce recurring outages.
The presentation moved into committee Q&A after Corford concluded. No formal vote or committee action on the recommendation was recorded in the meeting transcript.
