In 2015, Ontario’s incumbent province-wide radio system, which was operated by Bell Mobility, was end-of-life and required a full forklift upgrade. Televate was hired to provide an independent technical validation of incumbent designs and provide an assessment of the total cost and sustainability of the province’s implementation and operational options for the future, including a fully insourced, government-run model and a fully outsourced, vendor-run model. This project is the largest of its type in the world with a total lifecycle cost likely to exceed $1B USD.
Project Tasks
In service to the Ministry, Televate prepared three different capital and operational models for the Province:
- A fully-outsourced model where the Province runs a Program Management Office (PMO) and leverages the competitive landscape to hire vendors to construct and maintain the network, and realizes long-term cost savings by structuring procurement focus on competitive market areas.
- A fully-insourced model where the Province manages almost all aspects of designing and managing the network, but hires a third-party vendor to perform construction and initial implementation and realizes long-term cost savings by managing technical resources internally at government salary rates instead of paying for profit margins through third-party vendors.
- A hybrid model where the Province retains internal technical resources for key functions where the government can cost-effectively perform operations of the network, but outsources as-needed for special purpose functions where it is difficult for the government to invest in a full-time resource; the Province realizes long-term cost savings and minimizes risk by leveraging the competitive marketplace and managing technical resources where appropriate.
The project achieved cost savings for the Province measured in the hundreds of millions in USD in all three models by finding areas where the government could save money through intelligent, targeted procurement that encouraged the highest degree of competition as well as finding areas where the government would function more efficiently with internal resources. All three models presented the government with sustainable models that afforded different levels of risk and assumption of responsibility to the government for issues and failures. Ultimately, the Province went forward with implementing the radio system according to Televate’s model and recommendations.