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Case study

The procurement that did not award — and why the work still held.

The City of Charlottesville set out to overhaul its enterprise land management and asset management systems. Avèro mapped the processes, defined the requirements, and ran the evaluation. The city then did not award a contract.

The brief

Not every procurement ends in a signature. This is what it looks like when one does not.

Avèro has consulted the City of Charlottesville since August 2018 on business process mapping and system selection, working across Neighborhood Development Services, Public Works, Parks and Recreation, and Utilities.

The team used a People, Process, and Technology approach to document and analyze the current state across the city's key business processes, then built a comprehensive list of technical, functional, and security requirements with stakeholders from each department.

Despite the groundwork and a complete evaluation, internal issues at the city prevented an award to any vendor. We publish this one because a case-study page that only contains clean outcomes is not a record — it is a brochure.

What the work produced

The deliverables.

Business process mapping

Detailed process maps for Neighborhood Development Services, Public Works, and Parks and Recreation, identifying inefficiencies in the workflows as they actually ran.

A People, Process, Technology analysis

Current-state documentation and analysis across all key business processes, structured so the technology question came last rather than first.

Requirements definition

A comprehensive list of technical, functional, and security requirements developed with stakeholders from each affected department.

System selection

Expert system selection services to identify the most suitable enterprise land management and asset management systems against those requirements.

Where it stands

Status and outlook.

What happened

Internal city issues prevented the award of a contract to any vendor. The procurement did not conclude.

What survived

The process maps and the requirements matrix describe the city, not a product. They remain valid for whenever Charlottesville returns to the question — which is the argument for doing requirements work independently of a purchase.

In their words

“Avèro performed at the highest level of satisfaction from the department directors and myself. Charlottesville's Avèro team broke down decades of silos.” — Paul Oberdorfer, Deputy City Manager of Operations

Next step

Thirty minutes.
No pitch.

Tell us where you are. We'll say honestly whether we can help. If we can't, we'll point you to someone who can.