ICT Infrastructure Assessment & Cybersecurity Consultancy

The Performing Arts Centre of the Free State (PACOFS) is seeking a suitably qualified ICT service provider or consultant to advise on its critical ICT Infrastructure Revamp Project, which covers infrastructure, network and cybersecurity. The assignment is advisory and vendor-neutral. The appointed consultant will benchmark the current environment against governance standards and best-practice frameworks, including ISO standards, ISO/IEC 27001, POPIA and other applicable data protection legislation, and will provide recommendations to PACOFS management to support internal decision-making. The scope covers the ICT asset register and server room assessment, disaster recovery and business continuity planning, and a risk-based security review of Microsoft 365. It also includes an assessment of the LAN, WAN and Wi-Fi networks, network monitoring, fibre and structured cabling, and a non-intrusive vulnerability assessment (which requires written authorisation from PACOFS). The consultant will review ICT security policies, gap-test security controls, and produce a consolidated findings report with a remediation roadmap, an executive summary and indicative costs and timelines.

The environment is a single five-floor building with artists' flats, one server room, 4 servers and a terminal server, 72 users, 47 end-user devices, 16 Wi-Fi access points, and approximately 80 data and 80 telephone network points. Fibre has not yet been pulled into the building and will form part of the implementation plan. Bidders must base their pricing and work plan on the environment baseline in Annexure C of the terms of reference. Key deliverables are an inception report and mobilisation plan, the consolidated findings report, remediation roadmap and executive summary, verification oversight of implementation, and a project close-out report. The contract period is one year under a service level agreement.

Bidders must be registered and active on the Central Supplier Database (CSD) and have at least ten years of demonstrable experience delivering comparable ICT infrastructure projects, with five years in Microsoft 365 security analysis. Quotations are evaluated in three phases: compulsory documents (CSD proof, signed SBD 4 and SBD 6.1 forms, a company profile and B-BBEE certification or affidavit), functionality (minimum 70 out of 100 points, covering experience and reference letters, methodology, certified team qualifications, and a work plan with a cash flow), and then price (80 points) and specific goals (20 points). Quotations must be emailed to quotation@pacofs.co.za and close on 13 November 2026 at 11:00, although the closing-date notice in the document also refers to 11 November 2026, so bidders should confirm the deadline with the buyer. Firms involved in the implementation phase may not bid for this assignment.