Provision of Software Development Services for Bucharest Pilot

Item Description:

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (the “Bank”) is an international financial institution. The Bank was established by treaty in 1990, with its headquarters in London, to foster the transition towards open market oriented economies and to promote private and entrepreneurial initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltic States and the Commonwealth of Independent States that are committed to and applying the principles of multiparty democracy, pluralism and market economics.

The Bank has 67 members (65 countries, the European Union and the European Investment Bank). Further information about the Bank’s roles and activities can be found on the Bank’s website: http://www.ebrd.com.

The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (“the EBRD” or “the Bank”) is undertaking an Operational Effectiveness and Efficiency (‘OE&E’) programme to become a leaner and more effective organisation, one of the three strategic priorities for the Bank, alongside strengthening its transition impact in its Countries of Operations and securing its financial stability. A team made up of Bank employees and some external advisors is working across a range of projects with a focus on simplifying processes, freeing up capacity, bringing IT technology and practices up to date, and improving the work environment. The outcome of the projects should be measurable impact on the Bank’s transition and financial priorities.

Within OE&E, the Monarch IT programme (the “Programme”) aims to make the management of the Bank’s results, its transition impact, financial and operational performance, more effective and efficient.

In addition to the Bank’s investment projects, EBRD provides business advice to small and medium-sized businesses. A vibrant small and medium-sized enterprise sector is a vital ingredient for a healthy market economy.   This team focuses on providing advice on Innovation, Access to Finance, Regional Development, Resource efficiency and environment and Inclusion.

The EBRD is seeking to procure application development services for the Monarch IT Programme to cover the automation and integration of processes and data. An expert team of subject matter experts (SMEs) are already based in the EBRD Bucharest Resident Office (RO) and EBRD seeks an organisation that already has an established technology development centre based in Bucharest, Romania.

The Monarch applications will be built using an Agile software delivery approach on DevOps technologies being adopted by EBRD. The development will be undertaken on a platform built using Java and Microservices technologies together with commercially available off the shelf software products, such as a workflow engine, in line with the Bank’s broader technology strategy as defined in conjunction with the Bank’s solution architecture team guidelines. The DevOps application stack will include several best in class products. The Cloud will be used to host the applications where ever possible and appropriate.

The Programme of work is being led by the EBRD management and architecture teams based in London. The Programme anticipates having a maximum of 5 Scrum Teams at its peak. Development teams will be a mixture of permanent staff, third party Supplier resources, and other contractors.

A hybrid approach will be adopted with some Scrum teams being located in the EBRD HQ. This will allow direct access to Bank staff whose input is required for complex product development (e.g. Banking and Risk). These teams will be supported by the Supplier’s offshore resources. However, our intention is to source at least one of the teams to be based in close vicinity to the Bucharest RO. In this instance, the Scrum Team and EBRD SMEs will work hand-in-hand at all times.

This RFP covers a pilot engagement (the “Pilot”) over a period of 6 months to trial nearshore capability where EBRD SME resources work in close proximity with a third-party Supplier in one of its Countries of Operations. The expectation is this tender will lead to the selection of a technology organisation that has a strong presence in the country selected. Should the Pilot be evaluated as having been successful (see Pilot Engagement Exit Criteria) a plan will be put in place to continue the services in subsequent phases of the project.

RFP document