Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

CONTENTS
Request for Proposal
Introduction 2
Technical Environment 4
Service Requirements 7
Response Requirements 9
Response Selection 11
Appendix 1 - Technical Details 12
Attachment 1 – Corporate Information 14
Attachment 2 – Capability Statement 15
Attachment 3 – Priced Options 20
Attachment 4 - References 21
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Introduction
About Lort Smith
Lort Smith is an iconic institution that has been serving the people and animals of Melbourne
for over 80 years. Opening in 1936 at the current North Melbourne site, Lort Smith is the biggest
and busiest not-for-profit animal hospital in Australia providing a broad range of high-quality
animal welfare services regardless of the financial circumstances of the carer.

Employing approximately 250 staff and supported by over 200 volunteers, Lort Smith is situated
across two sites in Melbourne –

 The Animal Hospital at North Melbourne is located at the original site on Villiers St with
the heritage Lyle House building still in use today. The hospital has been undergoing a
state-of-the-art redevelopment since 2022 with stage 1 having recently opened and full
completion expected in 2024. The expansion and modernisation of the hospital supports
the long-term growth strategy of Lort Smith boasting specialist medical facilities
including radiology, dental, orthopaedics and pathology.

 The purpose-built Veterinary Clinic at Campbellfield supporting a best-practice Shelter

and Adoption Centre. The clinic provides services to the community and care to shelter
animals whilst recovering from injury and illness before being fostered or rehomed
through the Adoption Centre. The clinic is also home to a community dog park complete
with sensory garden and agility course.

Lort Smith is focused on building lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with partners who
have common values, sensitivity and community drive.

Purpose
Lort Smith is requesting information about IT Managed Service Providers and the products and
solutions they provide as outlined in the Service Requirements section. This RFP is part of Lort
Smith’s regular procurement review process and information will be gathered from several
different organisations to evaluate current and potential service providers. This is a competitive,
closed tender process.

We are looking to partner with a service provider who has the capacity and capability to deliver –

 Cost effective solutions and technical consulting services

 Maintenance, support and service uplift of a 24/7 mission-critical IT operation

 Understanding of clinical equipment, interfaces and software systems

 Best-practice approach to cyber and information security

 Well defined account management processes and service management metrics

Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Terms of Engagement
This RFP is issued solely for information and planning purposes and does not commit Lort
Smith to contract for any service, supply, or subscription whatsoever. Lort Smith will not
reimburse any information or administrative costs incurred as a result of participation in
response to the RFP. All costs associated with response will solely reside at the responding
party’s expense.

For shortlisted respondents, Lort Smith may reference check the respondent and any named
employees, make other checks (e.g. ASIC search) and undertake a credit check. The preferred
respondent will be required to undergo a security review. Concerns raised during the security
review may result in termination of further engagement.

All information included in this RFP is considered confidential and intended only for use by
respondents. No information included in this document, or in discussions related to Lort Smith’s
Managed Service Provider selection effort, may be disclosed to another party or used for any
other purpose without the express written or verbal consent.

By submitting a proposal, the respondent agrees to the RFP Terms and agrees that their offer
will remain open for 6 months from the deadline for proposals.

Key Information
RFP Timeline

The timeline for this RFP is outlined in the table below. All times and dates are in Australian
Eastern Standard time.

RFP document released 16 October 2023

Deadline for questions 27 October 2023
Question responses released 03 November 2023
Deadline for proposals 27 November 2023
Shortlisted vendor notification 11 December 2023
Shortlisted vendor presentations 15 January 2024 – 27 January 2024
Due diligence 30 January 2024 – 10 February 2024

Contract Details

The expected start date of the contract is 01 March 2024. RFP responses should be prepared
with an assumed contract term of 3 years with options for two 1-year extensions (3+1+1).

How to Submit Questions and Proposals

Please send questions and proposals, before the relevant deadline, to –

Name Tim Wakeham

Title Head of Technology
Email Address twakeham@lortsmith.com
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Technical Environment
Infrastructure
Lort Smith operates a virtualised environment with ESXi hosted across three physical servers
and a SAN in each location. A range of virtual machines is running on each cluster with a
breakdown available in the Appendix.

Animal Hospital Campbellfield Clinic & Adoption Centre

24 Villiers St 25-35 Berwick Rd
North Melbourne VIC 3051 Campbellfield VIC 3061

Core Hardware Core Hardware

 3 Dell PowerEdge Servers  3 Dell PowerEdge Servers
 1 Dell Unity XT SAN  1 Dell Unity XT SAN
 4 QNAP Storage Arrays  2 QNAP Storage Array

Networking Networking
 2 Meraki Firewalls  2 Meraki Firewalls
 13 Meraki Switches  7 Meraki Switches
 49 Meraki Access Points  15 Meraki Access Points

The network architecture is highly segregated with significant VLAN and routing configuration
to enable secure operation of clinical and facilities endpoints. Connectivity between sites is
handled by Meraki SD-WAN. VPN access is provided with authentication through RADIUS and
Azure MFA.

The North Melbourne site is complicated by being a multi-building campus with substantial
legacy. While the redevelopment of the hospital will, in part, resolve this situation, there will still
necessarily be more infrastructure on this site.

Concurrently, Campbellfield is a brand-new site with relatively little infrastructure and no legacy.

Telecommunications
Each site has triple-redundant connectivity across fibre, NBN and 4G.

Telephony and contact centre management is relatively simple and currently handled through
RingCentral with approximately 200 DIDs, 8 auto attendants and 30 queues. Polycom VVX500
handsets are used throughout.

The RingCentral solution is under contract until December 2023 at which time Lort Smith will
be procuring a replacement as the it is no longer suitable for the business.
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

End User Devices

Lort Smith users can be broadly categorised as clinical or administrative with this split driving
the way in which users interact with technology as well the devices used.

Clinical staff moving throughout the hospital or clinics require persistent sessions across
multiple devices. Lort Smith uses a combination of Remote Desktop Services, FSLogix and
Imprivata OneSign to meet this requirement. OneSign is used to enable card-tap sign-on, sign-
off and SSO. Administrative users are issued Lenovo laptops with a range of models across the
fleet. This has recently been standardised to E4s for general staff and Carbon X1 devices for
management.

Systems Landscape
Clinical Software

Software Purpose
EzyVet Veterinary practice management software
Smartflow Patient management and charting software
Cubex Medication and inventory management
IDEXX VetConnect PLUS Pathology requisition and results integration
Dicom Imaging requisition and results integration

Business Systems

Software Purpose
Raiser’s Edge CRM / donation & bequest management
Business Central Finance
Deputy Rostering
HR3 Payroll
Corrigo Facilities management
FlareHR Onboarding and HR master data
Beakon HSEQ management
Microsoft 365 Email and productivity

IT Systems

Software Purpose
Webroot Endpoint Endpoint security
Jira / Confluence Incident management and internal KB
Dashlane Password management
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Clinical Equipment
As a large tertiary care veterinary practice, Lort Smith is home to a wide range of specialist
diagnostic equipment which interacts or integrates with each other and our systems. While
these devices are serviced and managed under their own support agreements, most of them
are network attached devices which require specific configuration. These include –

 Siemens Ultrasound

 GE Optima CT

 Xxx Digital X-ray

 Multiple IDEXX diagnostic pathology devices (Catalyst, ProCyte, SediVue, etc)

 Multiple Cubex drug dispensing towers

Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Service Requirements
Account Management
Lort Smith IT consist of three fulltime employees with the MSP contract being managed by the
Head of IT. The selected MSP will be considered an extension of this team and will be issued
direction on incident resolution by any member of Lort Smith IT. Escalation and approval for
expenditure will be solely within the purview of the Head of IT.

Monthly account management meetings will be undertaken to discuss SLA performance, costs
and future projects. Weekly operational review meetings will be undertaken to review
outstanding tickets and provide direction where required.

Capability & Capacity

As a small organisation with limited internal IT staff, Lort Smith requires an MSP with wide
ranging capabilities across business systems, infrastructure and networking, cybersecurity and
user support.

Lort Smith employs approximately 250 clinical and administrative staff with 80-100 of those
working at any given time across the two sites. Overnight shifts are limited to North Melbourne
only and usually consist of less than 5 people.

We do not currently have a good understanding of the volume of incidents as the reporting
process is poorly defined and quite ad hoc. Anecdotally, there 10-20 incidents a week. There is a
similar situation with service requests and similar volume.

The Lort Smith IT team consists of two operational support staff who will respond to emergent,
onsite requirements, however there will be a requirement for the selected MSP to provide onsite
support or maintenance periodically.

Service Level Requirement

Lort Smith is a mission-critical, 24/7 operation in which service disruptions can cause harm or
death to animals and limit the ability of clinical staff to undertake legislated activities. As a
result, standard incident severity categorisation can be inadequate in understanding the impact
to the business,

As a result, Lort Smith considers incidents affecting clinical operations as higher in severity to
ensure resolution within an acceptable time frame. The following classification matrix should
be used for incident management –
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Category Response Time Restoration Time

Critical 30 mins 4 hrs

 Incidents affecting clinical software or integrations have rendered one or more staff
unable to work.
 High likelihood of negative patient care outcomes or reputational risk.
 A business-critical application is unusable by most users and no workaround is
possible.
 Any incident severely affecting many users.

High 45 mins 8 hrs

 Incidents affecting clinical staff members’ ability to sign on.

 A business-critical application is unusable by most users, but a workaround exists.
 Many users are unable to do their job.
 Incidents affecting highly time-sensitive work.

Medium 8 hrs 48 hrs

 Incidents diminishing important functions or non-performant but operational

systems.
 Few users are affected.
 Function affects productivity but not operational effectiveness.

Low 24 hrs As discussed

 Service requests
 Incidents that have workarounds, do not affect clinical operations and do not impact
profitability.
 Incidents causing minimal disruption.

Out of Scope
Services specifically out of scope for the purposes of this RFP are –

 Telephony

 Non-IT aspects of clinical equipment (maintenance, fault resolution, etc)

 Building management systems

 Physical access control, security or CCTV

 IT Management and governance

Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Response Requirements
Business Information
Please provide a detailed company profile and complete Attachment 1 – Corporate Information
as part of your proposal submission.

Capability Statement
Please provide a detailed service proposal addressing the requirements documented above
with the completed Attachment 2 – Capability Statement.

Pricing
Provide a detailed breakdown of pricing for the services provided in your proposal.

Please outline the following costs exclusive of GST –

 Monthly cost broken down per the pricing model you typically employ eg. monthly cost
per user / per device.

 Mark up on procured equipment and related provisioning costs.

 Cost to transition the contract.

 Time and materials contract rate card for project and other services outside the Managed
Services Agreement.

 Any other relevant costs.

Priced Options
In addition to the baseline capabilities priced above, respondents are invited to provide
proposals with relevant costings for the following priced options –

 Managed telephony [flesh this out]

 Network as a service [flesh this out]

 Security as a service [flesh this out]

 Embedded technicians

Please complete and attach Attachment 3 – Priced Options to submit proposals for any or all the
priced options.
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Insurance
Please provide details and Certificates of Currency for the following insurances –

 Public Liability

 Cyber Liability

 Workers Compensation

Transition
Please provide a proposed plan for transition of Lort Smith to your organisation, specifically
providing the following information –
 Key activities
 Timing
 Internal resource requirements
 Deliverables
 Milestones / checkpoints
 Success criteria

Partner & Subcontractor Relationships

Please provide a detailed outline of all the associated parties, partners or sub-contractors who
will be material in delivering services and/or outcomes in this response and their relationship to
your business. Any case in which Lort Smith data, systems or security will be handled by third
parties located outside Australia should be highlighted.

References
Please provide three references for customers with whom you do or have provided similar
services previously, ideally within the veterinary or medical industries. Not-for-profit references
would be considered highly.

Please complete and attach Attachment 4 – References to your proposal.

Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Response Selection
Selection Criteria
Proposals will be evaluated against the following criteria with associated weighting.

Criteria Weighting

Completeness of solution 30%

The respondent’s proposal provides a solution which meets all
requirements laid out in this document and has demonstrated capability
and capacity to deliver the contract.

Price 30%
Affordability and value for money. Lort Smith is not bound to accept the
lowest bid, however cost is a primary concern as a not-for-profit
organisation.

Experience delivering similar services to similar clients 20%

Proven history and references demonstrating delivery of services like those
described in your proposal. Experience delivering services to veterinary or
other clinical businesses, particularly not for profit.

Quality Assurance 10%

The respondent’s proposal demonstrates commitment to ongoing quality
through regular account management meetings, reporting and service
quality metrics.

Alignment to Lort Smith ideals, mission and corporate responsibility 10%

Selection Process
All responses will be evaluated after the deadline for submission to fairly allow respondents time
to prepare and tailor their submission post release of answers to submitted questions.

On closure of the RFP, the following selection process will be undertaken –

 Review and scoring of proposals.

 Clarifying information requests will be issued.

 Shortlisting of two proposals

 Notification to shortlisted respondents

 Shortlisted respondent presentations at Lort Smith Animal Hospital

 Finalist selection and due diligence

Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

APPENDIX 1 – TECHNICAL DETAILS

Virtual Machines
Devices QTY Site Role
LNSVRICT01 1 North Melbourne ICT Server
Building Access
LNSVRICTAC01 1 North Melbourne
Controller
LNSVRICTBKR01 1 North Melbourne RDS Broker
LNSVRICTBKR02 1 North Melbourne RDS Broker
LNSVRICTCCTV01 1 North Melbourne CCTV
LNSVRICTCCTV02 1 North Melbourne CCTV
LNSVRICTDC01 1 North Melbourne Active Directory
LNSVRICTDC02 1 North Melbourne Active Directory
LNSVRICTDICOM 1 North Melbourne Dicom Server
LNSVRICTFS01 1 North Melbourne File Server
LNSVRICTIMPR01 1 North Melbourne Imprivata
Backup and
LNSVRICTMGT01 1 North Melbourne Management, Dell TC
Management
LNSVRICTProfile 1 North Melbourne User Profile Server
LNSVRICTPS01 1 North Melbourne Print Server
LNSVRICTRDSH04 1 North Melbourne Remote Desktop Server
LNSVRICTRDSH02 1 North Melbourne Remote Desktop Server
LNSVRICTRDSH03 1 North Melbourne Remote Desktop Server
LNSVRICTSQL04 1 North Melbourne SQL Server
LNSVRICTVC01 1 North Melbourne VCenter
LNSVRICTIMPR02 1 Campbellfield Imprivata
LSCBLBKR01 1 Campbellfield RDS Broker
LSCBLBKR02 1 Campbellfield RDS Broker
Building Management
LSCBLBMS01 1 Campbellfield
Server
LSCBLCCTV01 1 Campbellfield CCTV
LSCBLDC01 1 Campbellfield Active Directory
LSCBLDC02 1 Campbellfield Active Directory
LSCBLPN01 1 Campbellfield Print Server
LSCBLProfile01 1 Campbellfield User Profile Server
LSCBLRDSH01 1 Campbellfield Remote Desktop Server
LSCBLRDSH02 1 Campbellfield Remote Desktop Server
LSCBLRDSH03 1 Campbellfield Remote Desktop Server
LSCBLSQL02 1 Campbellfield SQL Server
LSCBLVC01 1 Campbellfield VCenter
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Network Equipment
All networking equipment is Meraki and currently licenced.

Animal Hospital Campbellfield Clinic & Adoption Centre

24 Villiers St 25-35 Berwick Rd
North Melbourne VIC 3051 Campbellfield VIC 3061

Firewall Firewall
 2 MX84  2 MX84

Switching Switching
 2 MS425-16  2 MS425-16
 1 MS220-8P  2 MS250-24
 2 MS250-24  2 MS250-48LP
 2 MS250-48LP  1 MS250-48FP
 6 MS250-48FP
Wireless
Wireless
 15 MR36
 34 MR34
 12 MR36

End User Compute

To complete – need to grab numbers from somewhere

Clinical Administrative

Thin Clients Laptops

Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

ATTACHMENT 1 – CORPORATE
INFORMATION
Company Contact
Name
Position
Email
Phone

Company Details
Name
Address
Webpage
Establishment date
Number of employees
Number of technical employees
Primary market segment
Primary services provided
Serviced locations

Security
Do your staff undergo security awareness
training?
Do you conduct pre-employment police
checks?
Is access to customers data and systems by
your staff fully auditable?
Do your staff have training in the handling of
Personally Identifying Information?
Do you have a cybersecurity team or specific
staff?
Do you employ a CISO?
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

ATTACHMENT 2 – CAPABILITY STATEMENT

In completing this capability statement, please provide complete and detailed responses including examples where relevant.

Onsite Support Describe your capability for next day onsite support in the resolution of incidents. Additionally, please
provide details of capacity to provide project support resources.
Capability

Helpdesk Support Describe your technical support options, including the assistance request process, escalation process,
support hours, response times (for emergency and non-emergency support requests), staffing levels
and staff expertise.
Capability

Support Portal Describe the options you provide for staff to log incident and service requests including platforms,
automation, documentation and knowledgebase, and any training available to support staff through
this process.
Capability
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Monitoring Describe the tools, processes and reporting you use to monitor infrastructure and end user compute.
Will access to this monitoring be provided to Lort Smith IT?
Capability

Infrastructure Describe your capability to support, maintain, deploy and configure core infrastructure including ESXi,
Terminal Services and Windows Server.
Capability

Networking Describe your experience and capability in managing a Meraki network. Include information about
remote access, SD-WAN and licencing.
Capability

Patching Describe your process for managing patching of critical and non-critical updates including change
control, recovery planning and out of hours deployment.
Capability
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Backup Describe your capability to manage on- and off-site backups of critical infrastructure including testing
regime.
Capability

Procurement Describe your capability to procure infrastructure and end user devices on Lort Smith’s behalf.
Include details of standard markup, setup and configuration costs and expected timeline on standard
devices.
Capability

Vendor Management Describe your process for interacting with Lort Smith vendors particularly as it pertains to
management and resolution of incidents and service requests.
Capability

Microsoft 365 Describe you experience and expertise in managing Microsoft 365 including not for profit licencing,
hybrid AD deployments and maximising return on investment.
Capability
Request for Proposal (RFP) DRAFT

Cybersecurity Describe your capability to provide cybersecurity solutions, consulting and training.
Capability

Warranty & Inventory Mgmt. Describe your capability to maintain a hardware and asset inventory, and notify Lort Smith of potential
issues and cost saving opportunities. How do you manage warranty renewal, end of life notification
and decommissioning/disposal.
Capability

Clinical Background Describe your capability to provide specialist knowledge of clinical systems, equipment and
integrations.
Capability
Request for Proposal (RFP)

ATTACHMENT 3 – PRICED OPTIONS

Respondents are not required to provide proposals for all or any of the following priced options.
Providing a response to this section of the RFP does not in any way obligate Lort Smith to
accept the priced option proposal in the event that the respondent is selected.

Option 1 – Managed Telephony

Respondents are invited to provide options and pricing for a managed telephony solution.

Telephony and contact centre management is relatively simple and currently handled through
RingCentral with approximately 200 DIDs, 8 auto attendants and 30 queues. Polycom VVX500
handsets are used throughout.

Solution must, at a minimum, be capable of –

 Easy expansion of both extensions and DIDs.

 Configuration of auto-attendants, queuing, voicemail and call backs.

 Supports users across multiple locations and remotely.

 Provides reporting of queue and call statistics

Proposals should provide pricing on either a per user per month basis or per extension per
month basis and include management and support of the service.

Option 2 – Network as a Service

Respondents are invited to provide options and pricing for a Network as a Service offering.

Option 3 – Security as a Service

Option 4 – Embedded Technicians

Request for Proposal (RFP)

ATTACHMENT 4 – REFERENCES
Reference 1
Company
Industry
Name
Position
Email
Phone
Services Provided

Reference 2
Company
Industry
Name
Position
Email
Phone
Services Provided

Reference 3
Company
Industry
Name
Position

Email
Phone
Services Provided