Renovation of a mixed-use development in Chicago, Illinois. Completed plans call for the renovation of a educational facility.

1. The successful Proposer is expected to schedule and coordinate with the school principal, building engineer, and local technical staff for access to required areas and shall provide proper notification to school staff regarding LAN outages due to installation work. The Proposer shall coordinate communication of schedules, site visits, timeframes, and the impact of outages on the schools prior to the work. It is imperative that a response from the school is received before work is performed. The Proposer shall provide a sample communication plan addressing the requirements listed above. It should be understood that one element of the final communication plan should include finding a primary contact point at each school. 2. The successful Proposer will be required to update and track the projects in the Board's Project Management Tool, currently Smartsheet. The Board shall provide access and licenses for this tool. 3. Project Team: The Proposer must provide a Project Team led by a full-time Project Manager Professional, PMP (PM), to coordinate all tasks, activities, timelines, milestones, and deliverables. All positions required to make up the Project Team will report up through the PM. Please see Attachment N for the Board's suggested organization chart. The Proposer is expected to fill each role, and the Board will accept suggestions for additional positions if needed. The integration team(s) will need to be increased or decreased depending on project workload fluctuations. a. The PM will coordinate with the Board and their vendors on the work provided under the awarded contract. The PM is expected to conduct and moderate regularly scheduled Design and Engineering meetings with all vendors associated with the Project set forth in this RFP and act as the primary contact for both the Board and Project team members at all project levels. Question Deadline 01/10/2025 at 12:00 PM CT Questions Regarding This Rfp Must Be Received Through Bonfire, Or Via Email rmunoz37@cps.edu. Data Network Upgrades The Board seeks to contract with the Proposer to provide Data Network Upgrades to the Board in conjunction with and under the rules and guidelines of the Federal E-Rate Program and other network project services (collectively the "Services"). The Services may include or require that Proposers provide the Board with certain equipment, software and devices, including but not limited to switches, wireless access points and other network devices (collectively "Products"). The services will be rendered in any Board owned or leased facility including schools, administrative offices and data centers. Qualified Proposers interested in this RFP are invited to submit proposals for the Services and Products described herein. The Board will evaluate the proposals based on the Federal Communication Commission's "E-Rate" program rules to provide discounts on eligible products and services to eligible schools and libraries. Price is the dominant consideration for the Board in evaluating proposals and in making the final service provider selection. The RFP process will also adhere fully to the Board's and Illinois' procurement rules and requirements. It is anticipated that a substantial portion of the Services and Products obtained as a result of this process will be eligible for E-Rate discounts. With the award of this Contract, the Board intends to implement system improvements of Local Area Networks (LANs) and Wide Area Network (WAN) up to one hundred and fifteen(115) schools per year that includes such services as: (1) an infrastructure assessment of the existing environments (2) planning and design for improvements (3) coordination of the ordering of equipment (4) staging of new equipment (5) related construction and cabling activities and (6) removal and replacement of switches, wireless access points and other network devices that have been replaced. This Request for Proposals (RFP) is intended to determine the most cost effective, resilient and scalable method to connect all of the CPS schools, datacenters and the Internet. The Wide Area Network (WAN) RFI that was released in August 2018 informed the Board of multiple designs which has been integrated into the options the Board is considering. Currently the Board utilizes leased fiber circuits from the local carrier. The Board is looking for a solution that is based on either: 1. A fully managed WAN with leased circuits that will be eligible as a E-Rate Category 1 service. 2. A dark fiber network with a distributed hub and spoke design. Objectives The Board is seeking an innovative yet cost effective method to connect CPS schools and administrative offices to the Internet and the District's data centers. CPS is seeking to transform the way it provides these services to achieve operational efficiencies, resiliency, redundancy, reduced costs, better support of real time applications such as voice and/or video, access to public and/or private cloud computing services, prioritization of critical business traffic, and to take full advantage of available funding sources such as E-Rate and/or grant funding.