Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - SPICE (Support Procurements for Innovative transport and mobility solutions in City Environment)

Teaser

Traditional procurement procedure has been set to buy off-the-shelf products and services, with the lowest price as the main selection criteria. The traditional procurement procedure is not designed to purchase innovative and sustainable solutions and services. However, the...

Summary

Traditional procurement procedure has been set to buy off-the-shelf products and services, with the lowest price as the main selection criteria. The traditional procurement procedure is not designed to purchase innovative and sustainable solutions and services. However, the course of public procurement has been forced to adopt the fast pace of innovation together with increasing concerns on environment and sustainability. Public authorities may look into a wide range of selection criteria for any tender publications such as Life Cycle Cost (LCC), Co2 emission reduction etc. Using traditional procurement would challenge implementations of innovative solutions and services using public funding. This issue is particularly crucial for the ITS, alternatively fuelled vehicle, and mobility sector since they are innovation driven sectors.
This issue has been well recognised by national government as well as by the European Commission; hence, legal frameworks have been made to enable public procurers to use different procurement procedures for purchasing innovation. The EU level public procurement Directive, 2014/24/EU, give public procurers various procurement procedures for innovative and sustainable products and services such as Competitive Procedure etc. Although the legal frameworks are available, using such innovation procurement procedures are challenging for public procurers mainly due to:
•Uncertainty of commercialisation and costs;
•Dealing with confidential information;
•Unknown consequential cost for adaption or updating of existing infrastructure;
•Contract extension and review;

The main objective of SPICE is to provide a forum for facilitating the public procurement of innovative sustainable transport and mobility solutions in urban areas. The project aims to enable uptake of innovative and sustainable mobility solutions and to enhance the competitiveness of European industry in the transport and mobility services through smarter public procurements. SPICE objectives are as follows:
O1: To form a stakeholder group (SPICE Stakeholders)
O2: To collect current practices on using public procurements for innovative solutions, assess and summarise them
O3: To develop a set of recommendations as reference for public procurers and suppliers towards harmonised procurements of sustainable transport and mobility solutions.
O4: To use the stakeholder group to facilitate experience exchange, knowledge transfer, capacity building and raise awareness of procurement of innovative sustainable transport and mobility.
O5: To form a number of Common Buyer Groups to facilitate joint procurements during and after the project timeframe.

Work performed

\"Explanation of the work carried per WP for 1st periodic report:
WP1:Project management during the period
The tasks conducted under WP1 can be considered as, administrating the financial contribution, informing the Commission of the distribution of the financial contribution, review of reports to verify consistency with the project tasks, monitoring the compliance by beneficiaries with their obligations, maintaining the consortium agreement, etc.

WP2:Inventory of best practices and experiences
WP2 has developed the methodology and framework to select and collect best practices for various cluster topics. “D2.1 Specification of Required Input”, “D2.2 Definition of Clusters and Categories” , and “D2.3 Catalogue of the Best Practices” are delivered.

WP3:Analyses and recommendations on legal and technical issues
Activities of WP3 in the period of April 2017 (kick-off) and August 2017:
•Designing the work breakdown plan for the whole period and per partner
•Drafting first chapters of WP3 deliverables which explains the basis of the legal and technical recommendations

WP4:Coordination of Common Buyers Groups
Activities of WP4 in the period of June 2017 (kick-off) and August 2017:
•The deliverable “D4.1 Best Practices in Common Procurement” was delivered.

WP5:Engaging Stakeholders and Dissemination
WP5 works on establishment of the SPICE-core stakeholder group. An online questionnaire and invitation for joining SPICE stakeholder group was distributed. One of the objectives of this questionnaire was to evaluate the level of knowledge and expertise within public stakeholders as regards Directive 2014/24/EU. The result indicates the need for raising awareness on Directive 2014/24/EU and capacity building within the public stakeholders in potentials for implementation of the directive. Based on the results WP5 arranged webinars to improve the level of knowledge within the Stakeholders groups and beyond. List of webinars:
1. Introduction of Project And Innovation Procurement
2. Delivering Transport Projects Through Cooperation: “The Alliance Model”
3. Using Competitive Dialogue and PCP For Procurement of ITS – Experiences From Highways England
4. Intelligent Street Light Procurement: The Story From Copenhagen
5. How To Go To Maas?

\"\"D5.1 Stakeholder Group Design and Dissemination and Communication Strategy\"\" and \"\"D5.2 SPICE Stakeholder Group Launch\"\" were delivered.

Publications
• SPICE published and presented a paper at ITS European Congress, Strasbourg, on June 2017; Title: “Using Public Procurement as an Instrument for Implementation of ITS”.
• SPICE submitted an Article to the Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering, ISSN 2328-2142, USA; Title: “Using Public Procurement as an Instrument for Implementation of ITS in EU”.
• SPICE paper is accepted for ITS World Congress Montreal and will be presented in October 2017; Title: “Using Public Procurement as an Instrument for Implementation of ITS; Opportunities and Challenges”.
• SPICE paper is accepted and will be presented at the 7th Transport Research Arena TRA 2018, April 16-19, 2018, Vienna, Austria. Title: “Paradigm-shift in the roles of public funding in implementation of innovative and sustainable transport services”.

Status of Project KPIs
1.A minimum of 50 members of the SPICE Stakeholder group, including 20 public procurers: Accomplished.
2.A minimum of 3 physical meetings of the stakeholder (also used as capacity building events) and 4 webinars for best practice collection and assessment, knowledge transfer and recommendation consultation. The 4 webinars are conducted. The 3 stakeholder groups are planned for the 2nd year.
3.Case studies of at least 10 procurements of innovative transport and mobility solutions and documented best practices: Accomplished.
4.A set of recommendations on legal aspects: Activities of second year.
5.A set of recommendations on technical aspects: Activities of second year.
6.A min\"

Final results

Expected impacts
The SPICE project aims to strengthen the capabilities of public procurers on the procurements of innovative sustainable transport and mobility solutions in the urban areas in Europe, thus facilitating fast uptake of such solutions. More innovation in procurement of such transport and mobility solutions will increase European industry’s competitiveness. Implementation of sustainable transport and mobility solutions will also contribute to improvements of the traffic situations (less pollution, less accidents and less congestion), which contribute to the economic growth, reduced negative impacts on environment as well as well-being of the European citizen.

Website & more info

More info: http://spice-project.eu/.