City of Cleveland-Family Medical Leave Administrative Services

The selected vendor shall provide comprehensive administration of the City’s FMLA program, including eligibility determinations, required notifications, medical certification review, leave designation, intermittent leave management, compliance monitoring, reporting, employee/department support, and records management. The vendor must demonstrate extensive experience administering FMLA programs for large public-sector or similarly complex organizations and ensure full compliance with all applicable federal regulations.

The City of approximately 8,000 employees requires the vendor to serve as its third-party FMLA administrator and collaborate closely with the Department of Human Resources, department leadership, employees, and other designated stakeholders. Vendors must provide services in accordance with the requirements outlined in this RFP and submit pricing for all proposed services while demonstrating their ability to meet or exceed all service expectations.

Background

This project is important to the City of Cleveland to ensure consistent, legally compliant, and efficient administration of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) across a workforce of approximately 8,000 employees. Centralized third-party administration supports accurate eligibility determinations, timely processing of leave requests, and uniform application of federal regulations across all departments.

It also helps reduce administrative burden on internal staff, improves tracking and reporting of leave trends, and minimizes risk of non-compliance or inconsistent application of policy. Ultimately, this service supports workforce stability, operational continuity, and fair treatment of employees citywide.

Project Details

• Department: Personnel and Human Resources
• Department Head: Matthew J. Cole (Director)

Important Dates

• Questions Due: 2026-07-27T21:00:00.000Z
• Answers Posted By: 2026-08-03T21:00:00.000Z

Evaluation Criteria

• Quality of Proposal (30 pts) —

  Quality of Proposal includes Organization of the Team, Specific Approach to this Project, Ability to Perform the Scope of Services, Capacity to Perform Work, including consideration for current City project workload, and Special Commendations as defined in the “Proposal Submission Requirements” section of this RFP.

• Credentials of Key Personnel (25 pts) —

  Credentials of Key Personnel include Qualifications of the Project Team and Project Team, particularly the project manager who will be the lead person on this project, and their prior experience and demonstrated ability to perform the scope of work

• Demonstrated Ability (30 pts) —

  Proposed timeline to complete the work and demonstrated ability to meet proposed timeline and budgets. Demonstrated prior experience doing this type of project and examples of past related work completed by the Provider are included in this.

• Compensation/Fee (15 pts) —

  This item will be reviewed after the evaluations of qualifications have been completed.

Submission Requirements

• City Required Forms
• NOTICE TO BIDDERS AND OEO SCHEDULES (required) —

  Please download the below documents, complete, and upload. COMBINE ALL FOUR SCHEDULES INTO A SINGLE PDF.

• NON-COMPETITIVE BID CONTRACT STATEMENT FOR CALENDAR YEAR 2026 (required) —

  Please download the below documents, complete, and upload.

• AFFIDAVIT (required) —

  Please download the below documents, complete, and upload.

• FEDERAL FORM W-9 (required)
• Northern Ireland Fair Employment Practices Disclosure —

  INSTRUCTIONS: Pursuant to Codified Ordinance Sec. 181.36, the information requested on this page must be supplied by all contractors and any subcontractors having more than a fifty percent (50%) interest in the proposed contract prior to any contract being awarded by the City of Cleveland.  Any contractor or subcontractor who is deemed to have made a false statement shall be declared to have acted in default of its contract and shall be subject to the remedies for default contained in its contract.  For failure to cure such a default, the contractor or subcontractor shall be automatically excluded from bidding for the supply of any goods or services for use by the City for a period of two (2) years.

• CHECK WHICHEVER IS APPLICABLE: (required)
• By confirming, the proposer affirms that they are in compliant Northern Ireland Fair Employment Practices. (required)
• Northern Ireland - Proof of Compliance for Option 2 and/or Option 3 (required)
• Bid RFIs and Addendums
• Confirm you have received, reviewed, accepted, and incorporated all RFP RFIs, questions, and answers. (required) —

  If applicable. State "yes" even if there were no RFIs or questions.

• Confirm you have received, reviewed, accepted, and incorporated all Addendums?. (required) —

  If applicable. State "yes" even if there were no Addendums.

• Is this a single stage or two-stage RFP? (required)
• Is there a Pre-Proposal Meeting or Site Visit? (required)
• Possible Separate Bid Packages (required)
• Applicable language for OEO (required) —

  The default is OEO language, however, the Airport may have a different requirement.