2025-0261 Voice Technician (CTS) BELGIUM - 1 Sep

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 Voice and Video Conferencing 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

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.
 
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, participation in planned service improvement initiatives (those which will be referred as Service)for the Shared Workspace, V2 (Voice and Video) 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 technicians with estimation that the contract period will require work effort that is equal to 1 resource.
During performance of the contract, the Contractor personnel will act as part of the Purchaser's IT support organization.
 
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.

On Call:

• Contractor staff is expected to be reachable via means accepted by NCIA. Response time will not be more than 5 minutes. The on-call hours are after work hours (17:30-08:30 next day) during the week, and whole day until the start of next business day during the weekend (Saturday 00:00 Sunday 00:00, Sunday 00:00 - Monday 08:30). Contractor staff will treat the public holidays as weekend if exists during the on-call period. There will be cases where the on-call week might overflow to the next Work Package. In this case, the work initiated in the Work Package will be accepted at the next one and paid at the delivery of the next work package.

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, 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.

 
Requirements:

• Part of the work will involve handling classified networks, therefore, a valid security clearance at NATO COSMIC TOP 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:

• Advanced proficiency and 3+ years experience with Cisco Voice Technologies: Problem solving, strong knowledge of Cisco Voice Technologies such as Cisco CUCM, Cisco CUBE, Cisco UCCX, Diagnose and resolve technical issues, support software and basic associated network related problems.
• Advanced proficiency and 3+ years experience with Telecommunication Technology including TDM: Knowledge of managing call distribution lists, voice mailboxes, ISDN, TDM technologies, troubleshooting on Legacy TDM PABX integration to Cisco Voice Technologies
• Intermediate proficiency and 2+ years experience with Virtualized server platform products: Good knowledge in managing VMWare vSphere and VMWare vCenter
• Intermediate proficiency and 2+ years experience with Communication Systems integration with PKI and Active Directory: Good knowledge in AD and PKI integration with Cisco products
• Intermediate proficiency and 2+ years experience with monitoring platforms and protocols: Good knowledge of monitoring platforms such as nGeniusOne, CA Performance management, CA Spectrum
• Basic proficiency and 1+ years experience with Scripting: Basic knowledge in Java Script, Python or similar scripting languages
• Intermediate proficiency and 2+ years experience with Networks: Knowledge in troubleshooting basic network issues (including boundary protection devices) on servers and end users; Splunk log monitoring and analysis, nGeniusOne monitoring and analysis.
• Intermediate proficiency and 2+ years experience with Exercise/Military Operations Support (desirable): Knowledge and experience either working with or being in the military IT capacity specialized on Telephony service products (Cisco, legacy PABX, etc..) delivering support of exercises or operations; Knowledge of use case scenarios of Telephony service products (Cisco,  legacy PABX, etc..) in exercise and operations as well as day to day operational requirements of military bodies
• Intermediate proficiency and 2+ years experience with Remote Support Units (desirable): Knowledge and experience either working with or being in a remote support unit IT capacity specialized on Telephony service products (Cisco, legacy PABX, etc..) delivering support to daily activities, exercises or operations; Knowledge of use case scenarios of Telephony service products (Cisco, legacy PABX, etc..) in remote support units exercise and operations support as well as remote units supporting day to day operational requirements support of military bodies