Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Information Technology Department

 

To:

Dave Corliss, City Manager

 

From:

 

James Wisdom, Information Technology Director

 

cc:

Alan Landis, Purchasing Specialist

 

Date:

May 3, 2012

 

Re:

RFP# R1206 Recommendation for City Hall Copier Replacement

 

 

 

City Hall Copier Background

The City of Lawrence has long maintained a shared copier available to all departments on the 2nd floor of City Hall.  The current copier, a Konica Minolta BizHub Model C500, was purchased in March, 2006 and is now six years old and has been discontinued by the manufacturer.  The current BizHub unit is a color copier with several features and options that allow departments to make necessary copies for various projects.  In the last two years, the copier has had many maintenance needs and has been a source of frustration for employees trying to complete their projects.  Since many departments don’t have color copiers with capabilities of folding brochures, creating booklets, 2 and 3-hole punching capabilities, copying up to 12x18 documents, scanning of documents, and other features, the City has found that having a shared copier to be very cost effective.  The current copier was leased for five years at a cost of $624.47 per month.  The usage of this copier has gone down in the last two years due to the troublesome nature of the unit.

 

RFP R1206

Request for Proposal R1206 was emailed on March 24th to eight area copier dealers and was also advertised on Demandstar.com with a return deadline of 5:00 pm, April 6th, 2012.  Six vendors submitted responses that covered eleven proposals for various copier manufacturers and models.

 

Committee Review

A committee representing management and users from the Information Technology, Finance, Human Resources, and Planning Departments visited several copier vendors on-site, and later the committee members were involved in reviewing the proposals received and came to a unanimous recommendation.  Of the proposals received, Unisource Document Products had the most cost effective full-featured copier proposed that met specifications.  References were called by different committee members and all references were positive.  Although Unisource is located in Lenexa, several of their technicians live in Lawrence.  The included spreadsheet compares the cost of each of the proposals.  The scenario #1 evaluations include the monthly lease costs plus four years of copies based on last years’ usage.  The scenario #2 evaluations include the monthly lease costs plus significant increased usage of color copies and black and white copies.

 

Copier Test Period

The RFP included a requirement for a 15-day test period to allow employees a time to test the unit to verify the unit can perform the functions as stated in the RFP requirements.  The lease would be singed upon a successful completion of the test period, and the City Attorney’s approval of the contract.

 

Copying Costs and Maintenance

The RFP included a requirement that all supplies, excluding paper and staples, were to be furnished by the vendor for the 48-month lease.  Also, maintenance for the 48-month lease period is included as part of the proposal.  The City will pay an additional fee each month based on the number of copies performed.  Unisource’s proposal included copy costs of $0.00580 cents for black and white copies, and $0.04250 cents for color copies for the four-year period.  Since the current lease has expired we are currently paying 0.09716 cents per color page versus (vs .04250 cents in the new lease), and 0.01331 cents per black and white page (vs. 00580 cents in the new lease).  The vendor agreed to the four business hour response time as required by the proposal.   

 

Recommendation Action:

Information Technology and the evaluation committee for the RFP recommend authorizing the City Manager to sign a 48-month lease with Unisource Document Products of Lenexa, KS in the amount of $407.00 per month to lease a Konica Minolta C654 copier as proposed.  Unisource included an addendum in their proposal that allows compliance with Kansas’ Cash Basis Law regarding multi-year agreements.  Due to the age of the current copier and the fact it has been discontinued by the manufacturer the current copier has no value and will be recycled by Unisource at no cost to the City of Lawrence.