P3ITS - Pre-Commercial Public Procurement for Intelligent Transport Systems
Overview
Background & policy context:
Pre-commercial public procurement is an approach for procuring Research and Development (R&D) services.
The public sector in the EU, as elsewhere in the world, is faced with important societal challenges, in particular in the transport sector. Addressing such challenges requires new and innovative solutions, such as the development of cooperative mobility systems. Some of the required improvements are so technologically demanding that either no commercially stable solution yet exists on the market, or existing solutions show shortcomings which require new R&D.
By developing forward-looking procurement strategies that include R&D procurement to develop new solutions that address these challenges, the public sector can have a significant impact on the mid to long-term efficiency and effectiveness of public services as well as on the innovation performance and the competitiveness of European industry. Thus, by acting as technologically demanding first buyers of new R&D, public procurers can drive innovation from the demand side.
Developing a strong European home market for innovative products and services is the key for Europe to create growth and jobs - quickly evolving from R&D to markets in fields like Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS).
Objectives:
The P3ITS project aimed to start a dialogue between procurement experts, agencies and industry professionals from the ITS sector, with the aim of building a network of procurers and industry experts as consultation partners.
P3ITS focused first on the needs and requirements for the innovation and migration from R&D towards large scale market of cooperative ITS services. Secondly, P3ITS focused on the options and mechanisms that pre-commercial public procurement - as a special structure for procurement - provides for risk sharing and stimulating innovation.
Following the identification of requirements from industry and analysis of mechanisms for pre-commercial public procurement (PCP), the project consolidated the results and extended the individual conclusions.
Methodology:
The project began by focusing on the needs and requirements of innovation and deployment of ITS services. This steps included a series of questionnaires and a workshop for external stakeholders.
This was followed by a task investigating how pre-commercial procurement can help stimulate innovation and improve market conditions for ITS. This led to another workshop and a report on PCP opportunities and constraints.
Finally, the project brought together a set of recommendations for stakeholders and a roadmap for best practice PCP implementation.
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