The Vendor is required to provide to leverage modern information technology (IT) platforms to improve operational efficiencies and business processes, manage air quality data effectively, enhance reporting capabilities, and automate workflows.
- To support this effort, the Air District seeks qualified firms with experience and expertise in the following three (3) categories:
• Microsoft Power Platform;
• Azure Data Services; and
• Azure Artificial Intelligence (AI).
- Support and implement new and existing projects, provide consulting services, and help build staff capacity through knowledge transfer.
- Microsoft Power Platform
• Provide development, customization, knowledge transfer and project management services on Microsoft’s power platform, including power business intelligence (bi), power apps, power automate, power pages and power virtual agents. Services may include, but are not limited to, the following:
• Power apps development: design and develop custom applications to support various business processes within the air district.
• Power BI reporting: create detailed and interactive data visualizations for air quality monitoring, operational metrics, and other performance indicators.
• Power automate workflows: automate manual processes, integrating multiple systems to enhance operational efficiency.
• Power virtual agents: develop and deploy intelligent chatbots for public engagement and internal use, enabling self-service interactions related to air quality or service requests.
• Data integration: provide integration between power platform tools and existing databases such as SQL server and azure data lake.
• Power pages development: create secure, scalable, low-code websites that allow external users to access and interact with the air district's data and information.
- Azure data services
• Data governance: improve existing frameworks for managing data compliance, integrity, and secure sharing.
• Data modeling: design and modify data models for advanced analytics and develop entity relationships, data flow diagrams, and database structures.
• Azure data services: provide expertise in azure data factory, azure SQL database, and other platforms for data migration; extract, transform, load (ETL) processes; and big data analytics.
• Business intelligence: use power bi and azure analytics to build dashboards and reports for real-time performance monitoring.
• Database administration: manage SQL server and azure SQL environments, ensuring optimal performance, data backups, and security.
• Data migration: assist in transitioning legacy systems and datasets to azure, ensuring compatibility and data accuracy.
• Data architecture: design, modify and implement data architectures that support scalable, secure, and high-performance data solutions. This includes designing data models, optimizing database performance, ensuring data quality, and aligning data architecture with business and technology objectives across cloud and on-premises environments, such as azure data services.
• Cloud-based data warehousing / Data Lake: design, implement, provide for migration, and manage scalable cloud data warehouses and data lakes using platforms such as snowflake or azure synapse analytics to support high-performance analytics and data integration.
• Data integration and ETL pipelines: develop and optimize existing ETL pipelines to ingest and process large volumes of structured and unstructured data from diverse sources into snowflake or synapse environments.
• Performance tuning and cost optimization: monitor and tune data warehouse performance, manage compute resources, and implement cost-effective strategies for storage and query execution in cloud environments.
- Azure artificial intelligence
• Foundation model selection and AI architecture: conduct business analysis to provide for selection of foundation model(s) and agentic tools that would be optimal for proposed business solutions.
• Ai foundry and copilot integration: design and implement AI-powered tools using Microsoft AI foundry and copilot to enhance productivity, automate document generation, and support decision-making. Develop intelligent agents for internal use (e.g., permit evaluation & briefing summaries) and external engagement.
• Prompt engineering and agent development: create and refine prompts for AI models to ensure accurate, context-aware responses. Develop agent orchestration frameworks to manage multi-step AI workflows.
• Retrieval-augmented generation (rag) and model evaluation: implement rag architectures to improve AI accuracy using internal data sources. Evaluate model performance and fine-tune based on air district-specific language and business rules.
• Data ingestion and AI search: build secure data pipelines for ingestion from SQL, blob storage, and email systems. Integrate azure AI search with custom indexers or SharePoint connectors to support dynamic data retrieval.
• Web application and user interface: develop user interfaces for initiating, reviewing, and refining AI-generated reports. Include controls for prompt adjustment and data review.
• Security, compliance, and lifecycle management: ensure all AI-related services and solutions meet air district security and compliance standards, including compliance with applicable institute standards. Implement virtual networking, information protection, and continuous integration/continuous delivery pipelines. Maintain separate environments for production and non-production.
• Optional maintenance and support: provide operational playbook and conduct knowledge transfer sessions. Provide ongoing support for AI applications, including bug fixes, upgrades, and integration updates.
- Contract Period/Term: 4 years
- Questions/Inquires Deadline: January 2, 2026
