Deadline Date: Tuesday 25 February 2025
Requirement: Change Management Assistant, Service Level Management Specialist
Location: Braine-l’Alleud, BELGIUM
Full-Time On-Site: Yes
Time On-Site: 100%
Not to Exceed: NTE 88,290
Required Start Date: 2nd April,2025
Required Security Clearance: NATO Cosmic Top Secret (NATO Secret in the process of being upgraded to NATO Cosmic Top Secret is acceptable)
Bidding Instructions:
* Technical Proposal
Bidders shall submit a proposal clearly providing the following information:
* CV of the assigned resource for the project.
* The proposed approach to address the required scope of work and the defined deliverables (maximum 10 pages, A4 size) with sufficient details to allow assessment for feasibility of the proposal. The proposed approach should address the minimum requirements in the Statement of Work (SoW).
* Award
Introduction:
This Statement of Work (SoW) defines the objectives, scope of work and milestones required to be achieved by the company and the performance based contractor in regards to their role attached to the NDWC Personal Workspace team. The expectation from the deliverables is to support the team that is responsible to deliver the AV/V service via this SoW. The defined deliverables of this SOW require the contractor to participate in most of the tasks that the day to day work mandates, in order to ensure the effective and efficient service operation. Practical arrangements are described below, in accordance with what the above-mentioned team applies on a daily bases.
Background:
NATO Digital Workplace Centre (NDWC), part of NCI Agency, provides simple yet innovative solutions that underpin the Digital Transformation of NATO by providing feature-rich Digital Workplace, which enable NATO staff members to connect, communicate, and collaborate.
Shared Workspace service area deliver the following user-facing services to NATO Commands, NATO Force structure and Nations in all 32 Allied Nations:
* Workstream collaboration including email and instant messaging server backend and client frontend provisioning, management, operation and lifecycle across multiple separate networks of different classifications.
* Voice and Video conferencing server backend and frontend devices and rooms, maintenance, management, operation and troubleshooting across multiple separate networks of different classifications
* AV/V service is designed to give value added auditory and visual experience to the customers and users while doing their consultation sessions or briefings using the latest technology available.
* The services integrate with other services and enable NATO-specific functional applications higher up the software stack.
Through several on-going streams of work in Q4’24 and onwards, the services are rapidly evolving from using fully on-premise to a mixture of on-premise and public cloud technologies.
Purchaser Support Structure:
The Purchaser support structure is organized in three levels:
* Level 1 support provided by virtual Centralized Service Desk;
* Level 2 touch-labor and more specialized support provided by CIS Support Unit
* Level 3 provided by centralized team of engineers.
Objectives:
The purpose of this SoW is to define the requirements on the deliverables that the bidding company should provide.
The NATO Communications and Information Agency (further referred to as “Purchaser”) is seeking a qualified Service provider to provide efficient and effective deliverables that will be completed in form of tasks that include service operation support including but not limited to Incident and Service Request management, systems updates, troubleshooting and monitoring, project implementation, participation in planned service improvement initiatives (those which will be referred as Service)for the Shared Workspace, V2 (voice ,Video & AV/V) team.
With this SoW, the Purchaser aims to achieve the following objectives:
* Leverage industry expertise and best practices in installation, configuration, monitoring and daily operation of commercial off the shelf (COTS) technologies and software in the collaboration area.
* Ensure healthy and functional backend environment providing to the devices end users consume the services with the security and functional requirements.
* Improve the fault tolerance and disaster recovery of the IT systems by implementing continuous service improvement initiatives, thus enhancing the overall business continuity.
* Improve the maturity of the IT Operations by standardizing and optimizing activities and documenting procedures.
* To achieve these objectives, the Purchaser is looking for qualified Level 3 support technician with estimation that the contract period will require work effort that is equal to 1 person.
During performance of the contract, the Contractor personnel will act as part of the Purchaser’s IT support organization.
Scope of Work:
Considering the extended period of execution and the rapid evolution of the commercial technologies and their use in NATO, the execution of the work in this SoW is measured in work packages, where each work package is defined as deliverables produced by one person planned for a duration of one calendar month based on the monthly software and configuration item maintenance cycle of NCIA units (NCSC, NISC, etc..) and commercial vendors (Cisco, Poly, Microsoft, etc..). The detailed tasks in each work package will be determined before at the start of each period by the Purchaser’s authorized point of contact following the Scope of Work defined herein, and documented in writing.
Scope of Work:
The SOW covers the following activities and tasks to be executed:
* Change Management:
o Participate on Collaborate with cross-functional teams to assess, authorize, and oversee changes to our IT environment.
o Evaluate change requests, ensuring they align with business objectives and minimize risks.
o Maintain a robust change management process, including documentation, communication, and post-implementation reviews.
o Facilitate change advisory board (CAB) meetings and ensure timely approvals.
o Monitor the impact of changes and address any issues promptly.
* Problem Management
o Investigate recurring incidents and identify underlying root causes.
o Conduct thorough root cause analyses to prevent similar incidents from reoccurring.
o Collaborate with technical teams to implement permanent fixes.
o Maintain a problem knowledge base for reference and continuous improvement.
o Proactively identify potential problems and work towards preventive measures.
* Configuration Management (Secondary Scope):
o Plan the configuration management process.
o Identify the configuration management data as well as Cis and associated stakeholders.
o Control the CIs or the receipts, as well as deviations from those receipts.
o Make sure the configuration items in the CMDB are up to the standards and is updated regularly.
o Keep track of the changes made in the configuration and report to management about compliancy failures.
* Principal Assistant / Admin Activities
o Assist in the creation of the Purchase Requests (PR) in our internal system, also following up the lifecycle of PRs.
o Assist and prepare the necessary paperwork to bring in third party contractors (from HP, Cisco, etc.) to the different NATO facilities but mainly BLA and SHAPE.
o Responsible for preparing and managing the paperwork for the creation of new NATO CIS accounts for third party contractors and all the other processes related to that.
* Activities and tasks mentioned above will either have combinations or single focus based on the requirements of the organization at each Work Package.
Practical Arrangements:
Place of performance:
The deliverables will be produced on-site at Purchaser’s premises in Braine L’Alleud, Belgium or in SHAPE, Mons, Belgium.
The working environment is a typical office working environment designated as Class II or Class I security area.
Working Hours:
The Contractor staff is expected to follow the Purchaser’s working hours—Monday to Thursday from 08h30 until 17h30 and Friday from 08h30 until 15h30 and observe Purchaser’s official holidays.
The Purchaser’s official holidays may differ from the public holidays in the Host Nation.
Travel:
Depending on Purchaser’s priorities, travel may be required to both NATO and non-NATO nations.
Travel arrangements will be the responsibility of the contractor and the expenses will be reimbursed in accordance with Article 5.5 of AAS Framework Contract and within the limits of the NCIA Travel Directive.
Purchaser Furnished Equipment (PFE) :
Purchaser will provide to the Contractor staff standard IT work position setup to allow access to the necessary networks, IT systems and tools.
The Contractor staff shall follow Purchases policies, procedures and take due care of the Purchaser furnished equipment.
Reporting:
At the beginning of each Work Package, the Purchaser shall create Work Package Assignment Template (Annex A) on the weight of each work Category and define if any specific tasks are associated that requires extra focus and share this with the Contractor.
Once Purchaser filled Work Package Assignment Template (Annex A) is delivered to the Contractor, if no response is received in 7 week days, it will be taken as the Contractor has accepted the requirements.
At the end of each Work Package, the Contractor shall report the completion and achievements to the Purchaser point of contact via email for each resource providing services under this SoW.
Contractor shall deliver Delivery Acceptance Sheet (Annex B) for Purchaser approval and signature for each resource providing services under this SoW.
Quality Assurance Check:
* The deliverables shall be produced within the Work Package as requested and be of satisfactory quality to avoid re-work, and ensure the achievement of the objectives stated herein (i.e. following vendor, industry and NATO best practices and requirements) and Work Package-specific tasks.
* The Purchaser reserves the right to request change of Contractor personnel in case at least two Work Packages out of four consecutive Work Packages have non-satisfactory deliverables.
* The Purchaser reserves the right to request change of Contractor personnel in case of non-compliance with requirements of this SoW, NCIA Code of Conduct and accepted social norms (e.g. unprofessional behavior, etc.).
* The Purchaser reserves the right to terminate future Work Packages in case the Contractor fail to provide a suitable replacement person without any compensation for the upcoming Work Packages.
Requirements:
General Requirements:
* The contractor shall manage and be responsible for all Contractor personnel.
* The Contractor’s personnel shall be knowledgeable and experienced in the nature of the tasks and activities of the Service.
* The Contractor’s personnel shall possess valid Personal Security Clearances for the duration of the Contract performance.
* The Contractor’s personnel shall be courteous and professional in dealing with NATO and Purchaser’s staff.
* The Contractor’s personnel shall have sufficient knowledge in English language to allow smooth verbal and written communication.
* The Contractor’s shall strive to lower the rotation of personnel and maintain the same staff working under this SoW.
* The Contractor shall seek Purchaser’s approval prior to appointing new personnel to work under this Statement of Work.
* The Purchaser will support the Contractor’s personnel with access to the IT systems as required. The Contractor shall submit requests for change of Contractor’s personnel at least 30 days in advance.
* The Contractor shall handle the Purchaser’s furnished equipment (PFE) with due care.
* The Contractor shall operate the equipment following the manufacturer’s requirements.
* The Contractor shall minimize the impact to the end users during the execution of the work.
* The Contractor shall bring immediately to the attention of the Purchaser Point of Contact any issues preventing the execution of the work.
* The Contractor’s personnel will report to and receive guidance from Purchaser Point of Contact on-site, Service Owner and assigned immediate supervisor.
* The Contractor’s personnel shall follow local site procedures to obtain physical unescorted access to the assigned work position and logical access to the networks in scope.
* The Contractor’s personnel shall liaise with other Purchasers’ support teams as necessary.
* The Contractor’s personnel shall use the Purchaser Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) ticketing system following the Purchaser’s procedures and observe relevant KPIs.
Governance:
Purchaser's Key Roles:
The following personnel is considered Key personnel in the context of this SoW:
Service Owner – the person accountable for the end-to-end delivery of the IT services. Unless decided otherwise, the Service Owner is the Purchaser’s designated representative to sign the acceptance documents under this SoW.
Service Delivery Manager – the person responsible for delivering the assigned IT service(s) on a day-to-day basis.
Section Head – the person responsible for the engineering cell.
Same person may perform more than one role.
Contractor's Key Roles:
* The Contractor shall assign a project (or service) manager for the duration of the work under this SoW.
* The Contractor’s Project Manager shall be the single point of contact for any matters related to this SoW.
* The Contractor shall strive to maintain the same person for as long as possible.
* The Contractor shall seek Purchaser’s approval prior to appointing new Project Manager.
When the reasons to appoint a new Project Manager are beyond Contractor’s control, the Contractor shall inform the Purchaser at least 30 days in advance.
Escalation:
* For matters related to this SoW except contractual matters, the Contractor shall follow the escalation procedures as follows:
* The first point of contact is the Purchaser’s site point of contact.
* The first escalation point is the Purchaser’s Service Delivery Manager.
* The second escalation point is the Purchaser’s Service Owner.
* The Contractor shall escalate all contractual matters as per the Contract General and Special provisions to the Purchaser Contracting Officer and inform the Service Owner
Requirements
* Part of the work will involve handling classified networks, therefore, a valid security clearance at NATO COSMIC TOP SECRET or NATO SECRET level is required for the Contractor’s staff undertaking this project.
Specific Requirements:
To efficiently and effectively deliver the Service, the Contractor personnel shall possess at a minimum qualifications and skills in the following areas:
* Education: Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related field (or equivalent experience).
* Change Management: Minimum of 3 years of hands-on experience in change management and problem management.
* Configuration Management: Minimum 2 years in configuration management or in a similar capacity
* ITIL Foundation Certification: ITIL Foundation certification (higher-level ITIL certifications are a plus). Advanced proficiency and at least 3 years experience with ITIL best practices and frameworks.
* Knowledge of NATO: Intermediate knowledge and at least 2 years experience with NATO responsibilities and organization, including ACO and ACT. This can be compensated with equal or more amount of time spent in a governmental position or a military position.
* Soft Skills: Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. Excellent communication and collaboration abilities. Ability to work effectively in a dynamic, fast-paced environment.
* Admin skills: Intermediate knowledge and at least 2 years experience with different admin activities in NATO or any other government/military organization. Analytical thinking and active listening.