“Public Administration Procurement Innovation to Reach Ultimate Sustainability”

Programme: 7^th Framework Programme

Duration: 17.10.2013 – 16.10.2017

The overall objective of the cross-border PAPIRUS project is to promote, implement and validate Innovative Solutions for the achievement of sustainable construction through new Public Procurement process, focusing on Nearly Zero Energy Buildings.

The specific objectives of the project are:

• To Promote Strategic dual role of Public Procurers. On the one hand, the role of market maker, being the innovative technologies tractor. On the other hand, as early adopter, enabling the deployment of new directives of Nearly Zero Energy Buildings (Energy Performance of Buildings Directive5- recast (EPBD) is leading the transformation for new buildings.
• To develop a new procurement strategy focusing on the identification and assessment of innovation. The process will focus on the identification and evaluation of innovation from the technological point of view (including risk assessment). In addition the new process will integrate a methodology for common evaluating of the tenders from different administrations and different countries.
• To change the “purchase price only” mind-set. A key challenge identified by many public sector organisations is changing behaviour within purchasing departments – in particular using purchase price alone to decide between offers, rather than the full life-cycle cost of the product or service.
• To transfer from a local market to European market. This proposal will develop economies of scale, making special emphasis in innovative SMEs.
• To launch a Joint public procurement in 5 pilot sites.

ASM has several key responsibilities in the PAPIRUS project:

• Dissemination and Communication: ASM is leading the dissemination and communication activities, including development of dissemination materials, maintaining the project website,  organizing and delivering workshops for key stakeholders, presentations at local and transnational events, fostering collaboration with other EU projects, increasing public awareness of the project’s results, particularly regarding Public Procurement of Innovative Solutions (PPIS)