Innovation procurement is important as it can modernise public services and optimise its’ costs, solve problems and arising needs of the society and support start-ups and innovative SMEs to launch and grow. It is not only limited to purchasing innovation, but it can also be used as a strategic instrument (e.g. to facilitate the implementation of specific policies). Still, member states of the EU are not using to their full extent the possibilities of public procurement.
Considering this, the BUILD project was designed to enhance innovation procurement capacities for cities by providing comprehensive training and capacity-building actions targeted at public procurers. The project seeks to empower public sector users and create opportunities for innovative companies to showcase their solutions. This aligns with the strategic objectives of the EU public procurement directive (2014/24/EU), which emphasises the importance of opening avenues for public procurement of innovation.
BUILD integrated a range of high-quality capacity-building tools to facilitate the implementation of training services in cities, providing up to date educational materials on Innovation Procurement to stimulate its adoptions. The project engaged mainly with public-private procurers, but also SMEs, and startups. The training, focused on public buyers, provided by sector experts, covers various topics essential to innovation procurement, including guiding principles, legal knowledge and procedures, preliminary market consultation, pre-commercial procurement, competitive dialogue, competitive procedures with negotiation, innovation partnership, and risk assessment. The partner countries of the project are Slovakia, Estonia, Finland and The Netherlands. The cities leading innovation procurement involved in the project are Tartu, Turku and Rotterdam.
By fostering mutual learning and knowledge exchange, the project leveraged existing EU-funded initiatives, such as those supported by Horizon Europe and other EU funding programs and establish fruitful synergies. In the end, fruitful clustering activities were undertaken, maximising project’s results and outreach. The impacts are expected to be foreseen in the partner countries as well as to be extended to the sectors and areas of the synergic network.
