The Department of Employee Trust Funds is requesting a waiver of the Official Sealed Bid process to contract for pension administration benchmarking services. The Department has determined that only one firm, provides this service:

CEM Benchmarking Inc (CEM)
80 Richmond St West STE 1300
Toronto ON Canada M5H 2A4

The service provided is an analysis of pension related service levels and costs compared with peer pension systems. This requires all public pension systems to complete the proprietary survey provided by CEM. CEM analyzes the responses and produces a customized report for each participating system. This is a unique service as it is the only such service that includes public pension systems similar to the one administered by the Department.

Department managers are involved with several national associations and foundations related to public employee retirement and benefit administration. All of the peer retirement systems and related organizations have indicated that no other entity performs a similar service.

The estimated cost for the survey is $40,000

Information related to this waiver is posted on the Employee Trust Funds web site at http://etfextranet.it.state.wi.us. All modifications and other information associated with this waiver will be posted on this web site. No other notification regarding modifications will be provided.

Notice of this request for waiver will be posted until November 9, 2010 at 3:00 PM. CST. Comments may be emailed to Mark Blank, Purchasing Agent at mark.blank@etf.state.wi.us the waiver number and title should be referenced in your email.