Four new working groups will be established in early 2021. To set these up, we carried out a needs assessment to identify the most relevant procurement sectors and unmet needs to address.
The needs assessment showed that there was interest in the following topics:
Mobility
Description of the topic:
Waste collection, street cleaning, and maintenance vehicles are used on a daily basis in urban areas and most public authorities are looking at changing their city fleet towards electric in the short term. However, the market is not offering a wide array of electric heavy-duty vehicles and prices remain high with a lower level of performance. Charging infrastructures for those types of vehicles is also a crucial part of their development and implementation.
Potential focus:
● Joint market dialogues with suppliers
● Exchange and collaboration on criteria for procurement of large heavy-duty vehicles for waste collection and for street cleaning and maintenance
● Development of charging infrastructure for said vehicles
● Exploring different business models: purchase vs. lease of vehicles
Description of the topic:
Although busses are a major way of commuting in cities, the market for more sustainable solutions is still not fully developed and many buyers complain about not finding suitable products for city-wide scale implementation. Charging infrastructures for those types of vehicles is also a crucial part of their development and implementation.
Potential focus:
● Potential joint procurement/statements of demand
● Development of technical procurement criteria for both vehicles and charging infrastructure
● Shared market intelligence on latest developments
● Market engagement activities with suppliers
● Development of EV charging infrastructure for said vehicles
Energy & Construction
Description of the topic:
Heritage buildings present very specific case studies where multiple criteria have to be taken into account (preservation needs, feasibility study due to old construction, historical, architectural, cultural, and aesthetic values). Therefore, it is often complicated to retrofit such buildings. However, their retrofit can be very beneficial from an ecological point of view, but also from a financial perspective that usually benefits the municipality.
Potential focus:
● Joint analysis of state of the art
● Shared market intelligence on latest developments
● Joint market intelligence on product availability and characteristics
● Exploring best practice options, implementation of pilot projects
Description of the topic:
Building and infrastructure construction works conventionally use diesel-fuelled heavy machinery (NRMM). To achieve climate neutrality by reducing carbon emissions - as well as to reap benefits of reduced local air pollution (NOx, SOx, PM), less noise and nuisance - public buyers are demanding emission-free construction machinery on municipal building and infrastructure sites. Though small electric machines are more and more common, large emission-free NRMM like excavators are still scarce. The working group will exchange on pilots and jointly aggregate demand to accelerate the transition to zero-emission construction sites.
Potential focus:
● Shared market intelligence on latest developments
● Joint market engagement activities with construction industry, and aligning ambitions
● Development and piloting of procurement criteria for use of low-/zero-emission construction machinery in public works contracts
● Monitoring and verifying emissions and performance on pilot sites
● Potential joint procurement/statements of demand
possible more focused areas of work: circular road renovation, building strategies for low embodied carbon, use of bio-based construction materials (such as wood and natural stone)
Description of the topic:
A big part of sustainable construction of buildings and infrastructure goes through circularity. Circularity in construction encompasses the whole process, from dismantling of existing built components to designing and constructing anew. However, it can be difficult to know how to gather all relevant stakeholders around the same table, and be aware of all the technologies that exist to evaluate resource efficiency and implement circularity.
Focus:
Circular pilots in upcoming construction projects
Joint market intelligence on product availability and characteristics
Joint market engagement activities with construction industry
Use of environmental product declarations (EPDs) and lifecycle analysis (LCA) in construction procurement
Coordination mechanisms to ‘close the material loop’ from demolition to construction
Description of the topic:
The use of recycled material is a practice that is increasingly developed. Unfortunately, the different outlets for recycled plastic are usually narrow. And yet, plastics are an important waste stream. Recycling plastics in new construction is a two-pronged topic: plastic waste reduction and sustainable construction. This group would explore the different ways to include plastics in construction, such as road construction, buildings, retrofit, and others.
Focus:
ICT/AI
Description of the topic:
Smart lighting is lighting that is not only more sustainable (thanks to LED), but also that integrates smart features such as WiFi, sensors (such as air quality and parking), video cameras for public security, and electric vehicle charging points. Smart lampposts can also be used by telecom operators as existing infrastructure for next generation mobile networks (such as 5G). Urban smart lighting presents a proven and visible ‘quick win’ for cities, and involves relatively mature de-risked technologies.
Possible focus:
Description of the topic:
In the context of urban ICT, a digital twin is a digital replica of a city or a building (or group of buildings). By bridging the physical and the virtual world through sensors and other ICT tools, data is transmitted seamlessly from the reality to the digital twin, allowing the virtual entity to exist simultaneously with the physical entity. This type of measure can lead to smart management of buildings, groups of buildings, or cities (energy, demand side response, electricity distribution, smart grid, etc.)
Possible focus:
Description of the topic:
This group aims at using AI in data management and analysis.This area of work is still to be defined with interested parties, as AI can be used for many different purposes.
Possible focus:
Health
Description of the topic:
More efficient procurement of innovative medical devices, digital services and IT systems through the collaboration of public hospitals and purchasing bodies can lower the pressure on health budgets while facilitating better value for money. Healthcare can greatly benefit from digitalisation: data collection and analysis, patient monitoring, patient flow management… The COVID-19 pandemy showed the lack of digital responsiveness in times of crisis (it took months to develop apps, website, QR code, patient tracking etc.). A better digital healthcare can be developed for such situations where the health sector is under pressure and acute monitoring, management, and tracking are needed. In addition, societal and environmental sustainability will play a bigger role in the future as hospitals consume huge amounts of material resources and need to pay more attention to resource efficiency.
Possible focus:
Description of the topic:
A lot of diseases in the Western world are chronical and do not need physical examination at each medical appointment. Remote patient monitoring can, on the one hand, lighten the burden on the health sector by removing a share of their physical meetings; on the other hand, it can encourage a more constant monitoring of the patients and can be linked to a trigger system for patients in need.
Possible focus:
Joint analysis of state of the art
Market engagement activities with suppliers
Joint market intelligence on product availability and characteristics
Exploring best practice options, implementation of pilot projects
Potential joint procurement/statements of demand
Other
Description of the topic:
Local authorities can make an impact on food production and consumption by deciding to use their purchasing power towards more sustainable and healthy food (organic and plant based, reduction of sugary products in school canteens, etc). This topic will become of particular interest for EU local authorities as the European Commission is currently discussing the inclusion of minimum mandatory criteria related to food. Additionally the current EU procurement legislation does not facilitate the acquisition of local products, limiting the possibilities to procure more local and seasonal products.
Possible focus:
If you haven’t shown an interest before, but you still would like to explore further the possibilities for your organisation to be involved in one or more of the pre-selected areas, simply send us an e-mail at info@bigbuyers.eu.
Feel free to also join informative meetings on Monday, 22 February 2021 to further discuss AI/ICT related topics at 2-3 pm CET or circular construction at 3-4 pm. Registration via email.
Based on the results of the survey, in March/April 2021 we will establish four working groups on the most popular procurement areas – each group will involve between 5 and 10 public entities (cities, regions, central purchasing bodies, and others, from across Europe.
Each established working group will then jointly define a list of objectives and activities.
Public organisations from any EU/EEA country are welcome to participate in the working groups.
No, filling the survey will not commit you or your organisation to be involved in the initiative. Only once the areas of collaboration will be established (around February 2021) you can communicate your formal commitment to be involved in one or more working group.
Joint working group activities may include:
However each working group will be defining jointly their own set of actions at the beginning of the collaboration.
Based on the most shared interest among public buyers. In the first phase and through the survey we will collect overall interest to be involved. At the beginning of 2021 we will follow up with bilateral phone calls and interview to see where the main interest of collaboration are.
Each working group will decide the level of ambition, the work plan and the timeline of their activities.
The activities will be facilitated by the secretariat, however the formal input and content development will be done by the participants of each group.
Public organisations from any EU/EFTA country are welcome to participate in the working groups. Countries part of the EEA can participate in the meetings at their own expenses.
No, only entities part of the EU, EEA and EFTA are eligible to be involved.
No, you or your entities will not be required to sign anything.
No, the initiative is funded by the European Commision, DG GROW.
Want to keep informed about Big Buyers, but not sure you can commit to participating in a working group? Join the Big Buyers Observer Group instead.
Get an overview of key outcomes from the previous BBI working groups, an idea of why to get involved in the new initiative and more insights into the ongoing needs assessment.
Presentation - 08 December 2020
