PRELIMINARY MARKET CONSULTATIONS / FAQ
Frequently asked questions on the 8 preliminary market consultations scheduled in july 2023 under the common initiative entitled “Building green and climate-neutral city hubs”
Table of contents
Follower Cities CALL for TENDER / FAQ
Frequently asked questions about the Follower cities CALL for TENDER, pusblished in the framework of the common initiative entitled “Building green and climate-neutral city hubs”
A. Questions about the process in general
Although involving 8 European Cities, the process is owned by ANCI Toscana, the Association of Tuscan Municipalities based in Florence, Italy.
You can contact us at the following email address: climab@climaborough.eu
This initiative is launched in the context of the CLIMABOROUGH project, coordinated by ANCI Toscana, and funded by the European Union through its agency CINEA, under the Horizon Europe programme for research and innovation.
You can find more information on the project at this URL: https://climaborough.eu/
However, neither the European Union nor CINEA can be held responsible for any part of the process described herein.
Yes. The initiative is framed within Art. 40 of the European Directive on Public Procurement 2014/24/EU.
Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32014L0024
Because the scope and purposes of each are partly, though not completely different. For more information, see Section D of this Q&A text.
The three main principles enforced here are:
a) The principle of non-discrimination: all the registered participants to each Preliminary Market Consultation will be treated on equal terms. No restriction will be applied to the possibility of participating, apart from the fulfilment of the registration process, as also explained in Section B of this Q&A text.
b) The principle of transparency: all information exchanged during the process will be made public. No single participant will gain privileged access to some contents and all contents provided by them will be shared with the others (unless specifically marked as business confidential).
c) The principle of competition: the whole process as it stands, serves to the purpose of promoting the participation of as many economic operators as possible to the next phase, after the Preliminary Market Consultation. This is the procurement phase, also explained in Section C. of this Q&A text. On the other hand, participation in the first phase does not procure any particular advantage or exclusive right that can be used in the second phase.
Yes, you can. The only condition is to register in each. Registration can only be done through Eventbrite, following the link provided in the specific event page (see also Section B of this Q&A text).
You can find all the links starting from the URL: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/
They are held only online (see also Section D of this Q&A text). You can choose how and how many to attend.
Yes, although every City may provide translation services to participants. All communication and information exchanges will have to be in English.
Yes, indeed. The session recordings and every other information exchanged (see also Section B of this Q&A text) will be made public in the specific event page, few days after the event. All event pages can be retrieved from: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/
According to the principle of transparency, all participants upon registration will have to accept that every information exchanged during the event will be made public. However, if they also specify in writing that some contents provided are business confidential, those will never be shared openly, unless it can be easily verified, using common sense and accessible sources, that those contents in fact, already belong to the public domain.
In accordance with the GDPR, the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, all data and information received during the process from every participant, including the specific part marked as confidential, will be managed by ANCI Toscana and the City hosting the event with electronic means, only to the purpose of facilitating the participant’s access to the Preliminary Market Consultation and the enforcement of the principles of non-discrimination, transparency and competition.
Such data and information also include any material submitted prior to and/or after the event, as well as the audio/video recordings of the online and onsite sessions, which may include specific questions made and answers received. All such data and information will be made public, unless specific restrictions for confidentiality apply (see previous Q&A), on the various event web pages. These can all be retrieved starting from: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/
In accordance with the GDPR, the EU General Data Protection Regulation 2016/679, you can revoke your consent to personal data management at any time. However, if you do it before the event, it will be impossible for you to participate. If you do it afterwards, we obviously can’t guarantee that some other participant may have already had access to your personal data in the recordings of the sessions or by downloading the materials previously shared by you.
Yes, this is possible. Any entity can propose a solution (via our solution form that can be found on the single pages of the cities open calls) for more than one city. Also in the tender phase, it will be possible to provide a proposal per city (but not more than one proposal per city).
B. Questions about the registration and participation
We use Eventbrite, a free of charge platform, to generate a ticket for you, which is valid both in the case of virtual and physical participation. Please make sure to choose the URL of the “right” event(s), the one(s) you decided to attend. The collection of all URLs can be retrieved starting from: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/
Yes, but you cannot join a Preliminary Market Consultation unless you have previously gotten a ticket from Eventbrite.
No, you can do it as an anonymous user of the platform.
Normally the registration closes the day before the event. Please note that the hosting City reserves the right not to admit the participation of those who are not in possession of an Eventbrite ticket.
Only your name and surname, organisation of affiliation, country/region/city, email address and website. We also ask you to tell us whom you represent, whether a university, or an SME, etc.
You will provide us the above information during the request to Eventbrite to generate a ticket for you.
You can simply state “not available”.
No please, consider this is not a “normal” workshop, but a legal procedure. It is therefore very important that every participant identifies her or himself and that the information provided is shared with all other participants.
The Eventbrite ticket holds all the information on the venue as well as the schedule of the PMC event.
Using the email address provided to us during the registration, we will send you the link to participate remotely. Please note that his link can NOT be retrieved on your Eventbrite ticket.
First of all, please check your spam folder, just in case. Otherwise, send us an email to climab@climaborough.eu from the same address you used for the registration, mentioning the event or attaching the Eventbrite ticket.
It is stored both on the specific Eventbrite URL and on the respective PMC announcement. You can retrieve the Eventbrite URLs and/or download the PMC announcements, starting from: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/
We welcome your request to talk during the PMC. To that end, send us an email to climab@climaborough.eu from the same address you used for the registration, mentioning the event or attaching the Eventbrite ticket.
The solution proposal form is not obligatory. However, you may want to use it before, during or after the event, to specify some details of an idea, prototype, of existing product/service you may want to suggest as a possible target for the future procurement phase.
The solution proposal form can be sent out at any time, before, during or after the event, but no later than February 10 at 12 CET. ANCI Toscana and the hosting City reserve the right of not considering the information received after that date as useful inputs for the next procurement phase.
There is a different email address for each hosting City, which can be retrieved both on the Eventbrite page during registration, and on the respective PMC announcement. Both the URL of the Eventbrite page and the PMC announcement can be retrieved starting from: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/.
There is a different URL for each hosting City, which can be retrieved both on the Eventbrite page during registration, and on the respective PMC announcement. Both the URL of the Eventbrite page and the PMC announcement can be retrieved starting from: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/
No, it is not.
Yes, please. This is a mandatory requirement. Bear in mind that the hosting City will not be the same.
Yes, feel free.
As clarified also in Section A of this Q&A text, every data and information received from you, with the only exception of that marked as business confidential, will be made public before or after the event on the respective web page. The links to all event pages can be retrieved from: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/.
Unfortunately you can’t, with the only exception of business confidential material. See Section A of this Q&A text for more clarifications.
You certainly can, but with the consequences described in Section A of this Q&A text.
C. Questions about the future procurement phase
The overall objective of the 5 Preliminary Market Consultations is twofold:
- On the one hand, inform the interested economic operators, anywhere residing on the EU/EEA space, that we at ANCI Toscana are planning to launch a Public Procurement of Innovation call, indicatively by the first half of March 2025, with an indicative budget of €1.200.000,00 (one million two hundred thousand euros/00), VAT excluded. The purpose of the call is to identify and deploy 10 socio-technical solutions, 2 per each participant City, aiming to solve a specific challenge related to climate change adaptation in that City, which will be described in more detail during the corresponding PMC event. The average budget for every leader city will be 120.000 euros per service.
- On the other hand, ask for the advice of economic operators, public authorities, R&D institutions or individual experts and professionals, including start up entrepreneurs and SME owners, who may be aware that a suitable set of technologies already exist in the market, which may help solve one or more of the proposed challenges as they have been identified in the 5 Cities, or suggest reshaping some of them to ensure they can be fulfilled by the deployment of the envisaged socio-technical solutions.
The list is indeed final. It includes: Grenoble-Alpes Métropole (FR), Sofia (BG), Prijedor (BH), Issy-les-Moulineaux (FR) and Torino (IT). Each of them has identified and will describe during their PMC event a different challenge. However, some of them do have considerable overlaps or at least some common elements, which the readers of this Q&A text may want to explore further by contacting the respective event pages or the Prior Information Notice published at the following URL: https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:328730-2023:TEXT:EN:HTML
By socio-technical solution we mean a solution that combines technological aspects (such as those related to hardware, software, communication networks, data availability etc.) with social ones (i.e. related to people, groups and communities).
Such solutions may exist at any maturity stage – from idea to prototype to full product/service – or if one prefers so, hold any possible TRL (Technology Readiness Level) from 0 to 9 as a point of departure. However, as further explained here below, the final TRL expected at the end of the procurement should be no lower than 7 (“system demonstrated in an operational environment”). This should be taken into careful account, considering that the duration of the solution deployment phase onsite will hardly be longer than one year.
The socio-technical solutions envisaged are clustered in two thematic hubs, one focused on the transition “from waste to circularity”, the other addressing the shift “from isolated energy and mobility systems to integrated services”.
They should assist citizens and/or urban policy makers in taking climate friendly decisions and actions supported by specific data and information on the carbon footprint of human activities in the selected operational environments.
No, they are not. They will be made public in the first half of March 2025, when the call for tender is published by ANCI Toscana. Please note that this is only an indicative date.
Yes, there will be 5 lots of roughly the same amount, one per participant City.
No, they are not. But ANCI Toscana will make sure that the widest possible participation from economic operators residing in the EU/EEA space is allowed.
The issue is under evaluation. Currently the answer is no, with the only possible exception of entities residing in countries holding an association agreement with Horizon Europe.
Definitely yes. There is no restriction based on nationality.
The purpose of this initiative is not the reception of offers, but the discussion of the challenges posed by the 5 Cities and the reception of ideas, suggestions and recommendations that will help ANCI Toscana shape the eventual Public Procurement of Innovation instrument.
In particular, any advice on the state of arts, market capabilities, ongoing/past R&D projects etc. will be more than welcome, although not obligatory.
This is why the fulfilment of the solution proposal form is not obligatory, though recommended. See Section B of this Q&A text for more details
This has already been identified as the Innovation Partnership, as per art. 31 of the European Directive on Public Procurement 2014/24/EU, available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32014L0024 . The advantage of this instrument is that within the time frame allocated for deployment, which expected to be roughly one year in each City, it can make room for multiple solutions (two, in our case) at the same time, being delivered in parallel. Such solutions may well imply diverse methodological approaches and hold different degrees of initial maturity (as measured by the TRL – Technology Readiness Level), while it is required that they should converge to a minimum TRL of 7 by project’s end.
At the end of the phase of deployment, all solutions will be purchased by ANCI Toscana and put at the free disposal of the respective Cities.
A special agreement will regulate the post-project phase in such a way to ensure that the City will continue using the deployed solutions and the respective proposers may transform them into market products or services on a larger scale at their ease.
No. The future call for tender will be opened to all economic operators who fulfil the conditions to be established therein, no matter whether they have been participating to any Preliminary Market Consultation or have submitted any solution proposal or nothing at all.
The only possible advantage from participation is to get to know about the start of arts and/or suggest to ANCI Toscana a specific direction that the future Public Procurement of Innovation instrument should undertake, to procure the most feasible solution pathway(s) of one or more than one challenge(s) in the involved Cities.
The foreseen duration of the contract will be 12 months, starting from January 2026.
Yes, this is possible.
The main condition will be to run an established business under the national legislation, without any impediment to contract with public administration.
No, this is not required.
Yes – or equivalent, for example in case of public R&D institutions.
Yes, unless the national legislation allows you to invoice us for your services without a VAT number, which some legislations allow doing (though it is pretty uncommon). This exceptional condition has to be separately examined on a case by case basis.
Only for the winners the call for tender, this will not be requested for the submission of an application.
We haven’t thought about that. However neither would be asked at the stage of presenting the bid. An insurance might be required to sign the contract, but more in the form of a performance bond. And a document from the Tax Office might be needed in case you have some pending issues there.
Definitely not. It might be a bonus (for example, in case of a tie in the evaluation criteria, this may be a preferential aspect. Same goes for e.g. gender etc.).
D. Questions about the single PMC events
Please refer to the specific event page. You can find all the links starting from the URL: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/open-calls/
Based on the description provided in the Prior Information Notice on TED and the dedicated page of our website: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/prijedor/
The city will be expanded by city representatives during the Preliminary Market Consultation.
It is early to say so, but the City intends to innovate, then solutions providing good results will have an impact.
So that the process also have this beneficial side, the city should contain this work of civil society organization on the education.
There are some indicators that are in the slides presented during the PMC, thus about 230 tons of waste is being collected on the annual basis and it’s selectively collected.
The major, major assumption to do so is to increase the quantities of this selectively collected waste. So they are already in some channels which are connected to recycling process. So now it’s up to the system to raise the quantities of selectively collected waste in the city. So from that we think that there is a lot of. There is a great potential for this. But what is problem at the moment is that the citizens are not, they’re not doing separation and they are not even obliged, maybe even they are obliged by the law. But it’s, it’s not, it’s not performed well. It’s not like in the, in the, in the countries of the European Union, in which you can see that there is obligations for the citizens to collect their waste on specific manner. In that circumstances it is very, let’s say it’s very hard to expect now if they are not pushed by some legal framework with some. Not incentives, but even with some sanctions, we cannot consider that there is going to be increase of this increase of the quantities of selectively collected waste. So now it’s the question of providing the solution for them as easiest as possible and attractive as possible to start doing so, so that we could actually increase the quantities.
Based on the description provided in the Prior Information Notice on TED and the dedicated page of our website: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/sofia/
The city will be expanded by city representatives during the Preliminary Market Consultation.
The evaluation process is managed by CLIMABOROUGH, however the solutions will need to be applied to 5 centers, but they need to be potentially applicable to all the centers of the city and potentially be replicable by other cities.
Yes, Chatbot might be one of the solutions, but not the only one. Sofia is looking for all possible kinds of approaches and solutions. The demand of such service would be on the go and the mobile application is one option or mobile version of a website, which is another option. The most important is to give as such as possible information on.
Bulgarian is fundamental, but English is a very good option on top of it.
As a matter of fact, they’re a bit different projects. The centuries are something that has been planned a long time ago, and now we are introducing them one by one. The idea is to promote separation at the source of waste generated by households and to build a network of up to 40 of them covering the entire city. And in order to motivate stakeholders and especially households to participate in them, we are creating this bonus system. The reason that we are relating one project to the other is that these centers will be open just during working hours and we need a full presence on 24/24.
Based on the description provided in the Prior Information Notice on TED and the dedicated page of our website: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/issy-les-moulineaux/
The city will be expanded by city representatives during the Preliminary Market Consultation.
The City uses an Opendatasoft platform, it can be consulted at the following address: data.issy.com.
Based on the description provided in the Prior Information Notice on TED and the dedicated page of our website: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/grenoble/
The city will be expanded by city representatives during the Preliminary Market Consultation.
Based on the description provided in the Prior Information Notice on TED and the dedicated page of our website: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/pilsen/
The city will be expanded by city representatives during the Preliminary Market Consultation.
At this stage, City of Pilsen doesn’t want to provide the solution providers with something as a ‘blank cheque’ and offer support and contributions. Solution providers will have the opportunity to propose any installations that will be evaluated according to the Call for Tender rules. The solution providers will have the responsability of the deployment.
However, the City of Pilsen will provide in-kind support, such as support to the fixation of signs, to the solution providers.
Please refer to the specific event page. It will contain the recordings of the sessions, the list of participants and a summary report. You can find all the page links starting from the URL: https://climaborough.eu/public-procurement/preliminary-market-consultations-of-follower-cities/.
At the same URL, ANCI Toscana will also publish the information on the future call for tender, better described in Section C of this Q&A text.
You can also subscribe to our newsletter on our website (www.climaborough.eu) to receive all the information about the Call for Tender.
E. How to make further inquiries
Not at all. Please contact us every now and then to check for updates.
You can contact us at the following email address: climab@climaborough.eu
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