Blue House Energy (Halifax, NS)
August 2012-present
In his work with Blue House Energy for more than ten years, Hal Richman has:
- Developed specifications for procurement of the Firmwater LMS, as well as specifications and sandbox testing of potential alternatives
- Managed Firmwater and TalentLMS
- Provided customer support for Firmwater and TalentLMS
- Managed system integration of Firmwater and TalentLMS with Shopify, Chargebee and Hubspot
- Developed and implemented LMS procedures, including:
- Documenting all roles and responsibilities for support, content development and management, e-commerce integration, etc.
- Content management and backup
- User support systems
- Creating standard operating procedures for key functions such as:
- Admin training
- Content updates, backup and archiving
- Course settings
- Email notifications
- File management
- Pre-orders
- QA and maintenance
- Reporting
- Scoring settings
- User support
Halifax Regional Municipality – Fire and Emergency Services
January-March 2014
The Halifax Regional Municipality (HRM) initiated a project to select, procure and implement a Software as a Service (SaaS) Learning Management System (LMS). The LMS was to be used to deliver web-based training to HRM employees across multiple HRM business units. Through the RFP process, HRM wanted to select and procure a system that meets HRM’s corporate-wide LMS requirements. The scope for this project, however, was to implement the LMS for use by the Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency Safety and Training Division.
Hal Richman was hired to provide strategic consulting services for the LMS procurement process. These services included providing a detailed review and revision of LMS functionality; prioritization of LMS functionality; market scanning for suitable vendors; and a review of systems integration requirements and integration of content management requirements with the LMS.
Intelliware Development, Inc. – SmartServe
October – November 2010
Hal Richman was hired by Intelliware (Toronto, ON, Canada) to leverage his experience in Learning Management System (LMS) procurement for their client, SmartServe.
The initial step was to develop a set of requirements that were used to evaluate the functional capabilities of the LMS, along with a scoring system to rank vendors. A short list of vendors was considered for evaluation, and an initial review of the first six vendors was conducted. Applying the selection criteria, the team arrived at a short list of two vendors at the opposite ends of the price/functionality spectrum.
The shortlisted vendors were invited to participate in a demonstration of their application using a supplied demo script. Based on this scoring and web demos, one vendor was recommended. Before the final recommendation was made, references were checked and further technical and vendor due diligence was completed.
UNDP Country Office Bahrain
July 2007 – September 2007
- Hal Richman was hired by the United Nations Development Programme in the Kingdom of Bahrain to resolve on-going procurement issues related to a learning management system (LMS) for the Civil Service Bureau, in anticipation of the launching of their learning platform, which would serve 28,000 civil servants.
- Hal and the Civil Service Bureau reviewed the Request For Proposals (RFP) issued for the purchase of an LMS, prepared an analysis of the ability of the LMS vendors to provide technical integration with Oracle HRMS, met with the LMS vendors to clarify a short list of specific points needed for the evaluation, updated the RFP evaluation ranking according to RFP guidelines, and selected the winning vendor.
- Five days after arriving in the Kingdom of Bahrain, Hal presented his final report and recommendations to the Project Steering Committee. The recommendations were immediately accepted. Several months later, Hal was hired to prepare the contract with the selected vendor and backstop UNDP in resolving contractual issues.