Consultant: PenFAX 5 meets most requirements but cost and schedule push board to seek RFP

A consultant told the board that JEA's PenFAX 5 aligns closely with ISERs' needs but that its cost and schedule estimates made the upgrade resemble a new implementation rather than a simple upgrade.

"The PENFAX 5 based product met 527 of the 598 requirements or approximately 88%," said Scott Larson, principal consultant with Linea Solutions, summarizing the vendor's response to a requirements traceability matrix the project team provided. Larson explained the project began in August 2023, produced nearly 600 consolidated functional and technical requirements, and included demonstrations of PenFAX 5.

Linea's operational needs assessment identified key limitations of the incumbent PenFAX 3.5 platform — aging architecture, limited member self-service, lack of workflow management and no direct DocuWare integration — and recommended exploring both an upgrade to PenFAX 5 and a competitive replace path via RFP. Larson said initial high-level pricing provided by JEA in July suggested costs and timelines more characteristic of a brand-new pension administration implementation.

Board members asked about comparative costs and how long a replacement would take. Staff and the consultant said exact, apples-to-apples pricing requires a competitive procurement and a clear RFP scope; Larson said the team could target issuing an RFP by year-end with proposals by the end of the first quarter, and that a live replacement from a new vendor could take 18–36 months depending on scope.