Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh announced the search for a vendor to create the city’s first-ever Coordinated Access system, a single platform that providers, housing owners and the city can use to match homeless individuals with available housing and supportive services.

The vendor will develop a system to track housing vacancies and facilitate housing placements through a centralized online database. The system will integrate client data from the existing Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) data warehouse with information about housing vacancies and related services.

The city requires that all homeless programs report data into the HMIS. Boston’s current system has eight separate sources of information on three platforms feeding into a unified data warehouse. The new platform will integrate these sources and add additional data from affordable housing providers.

The project will also include an automated “matching engine,” which will apply a series of rules and criteria to give the city’s most vulnerable populations priority connection to available housing units.

The system will also track available housing units, programs and housing vouchers through a front-end system, which will include a registry of all housing units, along with their eligibility requirements and accompanying services, and an interface for service providers to enter vacancies and program availability.

These factors will help the city to provide a match and indicate whether it was accepted or rejected by both the homeless individual and the housing provider, and the reasons for acceptance or rejection. This process is intended to be repeated until a match is found.

The RFP is available on the city’s Supplier Portal. The deadline for proposals is noon on Friday, Oct. 16.

The system is expected to launch in spring 2016.