AESA organize an Exploration Committee last year with representation from across the country to research and develop a new strategic asset for AESA in the form of an online platform. Funding is being provided by the AESA Foundation for this work.
The Exploration Committee held it’s first meeting in Bozeman, MT last October.
The session was led by Susan Leddick (PKR) with support from Andy Pechacek (CRMG) and Rick Kamal (EduNova).
This meeting resulted in a recommendation and plan of action for the Executive Council to move forward.
The Executive Council and AESA staff put together a Response for Proposal (RFP) which would, in essence, ensure that we receive bids for this important work, making sure this is part of a rigorous due diligence process. A Platform RFP sub-committee was selected to guide the RFP process. After three months of working through the RFP writing process with the assistance of legal counsel, the sub-committee decided that we didn't have sufficient information for an RFP at this time.
We took a step back and on April 13 released a Request for Information (RFI). The committee narrowed the scope of work to focus on the first phase of the project which is a community platform for members to share information and best practices with each other. The committee agreed that this would be a better place to begin and to ensure that we can engage our members in this new system for communication before the next steps with vendor interaction.
The committee received five responses to the RFI. Interviews are currently being held that provide important insights as to how each of the selected vendors would design a community platform for AESA, as well as a timeline and costs for development and implementation associated with each phase of the project.
Stayed tuned as we move forward to develop this new membership benefit!
