PRESS RELEASE

14 November 2022 | Bratislava, Slovakia:  PEDAL Consulting, s.r.o. (Slovakia) together with its five European partners just launched a new project “Building Capacities in Innovation Procurement for Cities – BUILD”. It will promote the use of public procurement of sustainable innovation. The European Commission allocated the sum of € 498 187,50 under its Horizon Europe programme.

With the significant potential of public procurement, there are still several key challenges slowing the widespread adoption in the EU countries. That is why it has become an important part of the innovation policy agenda and the core of the new EU public procurement directive.

The 2-year long BUILD project aims to achieve three main objectives:

a) to encourage cooperation and knowledge sharing between public buyers, i.e. to contribute to the development of sustainable innovation and to create a fertile platform for future collaboration;

b) to discover the most up-to-date innovative technological solutions and assist in their development and further acquisition by means of facilitating the enhancement of innovation knowledge and skills within buyers;

c) to link and establish synergies with research and innovation projects funded by the EU, with specific focus on EU funded projects fostering Public Procurement for Innovation.

The project team consists of partners from Slovakia, Estonia, Finland and the Netherlands. It has already started with the exchange of best practices. Mostly those that can reach to and motivate procurers, enhance the interest of enterprises in innovation procurements.

Moreover, the team will soon map and scout relevant stakeholders before rolling out a number of trainings and capacity building actions. They will be targeted at upskilling the public procurers on the topic of innovation procurement.

Under the BUILD project, the following target groups will be engaged and trained – private procurers, SMEs and start-ups. Main topics being: guiding principles, legal knowledge and procedures; preliminary market consultation and pre-commercial procurement; competitive dialogue and competitive procedure with negotiation; innovation partnership and the risk assessment.

Public procurement of innovation is not at all new to the project coordinator PEDAL Consulting. With the experience from previous actions in this area, such as PROCEDIN[1], PRONTO[2] and Tenderio[3] projects, PEDAL Consulting is among the top European experts on Public Procurement of Innovation.

About PEDAL Consulting
PEDAL Consulting is an innovation management consulting firm. It has got a 12+ year experience in the design and implementation of partnerships and cooperation models while addressing societal challenges. It is also the leading SME national performer with the most approved and successfully implemented grants under the Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe and COSME programmes of the European Commission. The multinational team strives to deliver outstanding results to clients – from both the public and private sectors across multiple industries, geographies, and policy domains. Pedal Consulting has got extended networks in all EU member states, but also in wider Europe, Eurasia, Africa, MENA, South America, and the United States.

Contact – Project Coordinator:
Ms Dominika FROHLICHOVA, PEDAL Consulting s.r.o. 
e-mail: d.frohlichova@pedal-consulting.eu

Project Media officer:
Mr Innocent MATEEKA, PEDAL Consulting s.r.o.
email: i.mateeka@pedal-consulting.eu

The BUILD project has received funding from the European Union’s HORIZON EUROPE research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101070745.