Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2020-07-06
Buyer: Forum Virium Helsinki
Country: FI
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 48000000 | 72000000 | 73000000 | 73120000
Estimated value: 4666630 EUR

Technical requirements: This pre-commercial procurement is carried out by Forum Virium Helsinki who was appointed as lead procurer in the name and on behalf the group listed in I.1). The applicable national law is Finnish.
AI4Cities is a 3-year EU-funded project bringing together leading European cities looking for pre-commercial artificial intelligence (AI) solutions to accelerate their endeavour to reach carbon neutrality. Helsinki (Finland), Amsterdam (Netherlands), Copenhagen (Denmark), Paris region (France), Stavanger (Norway) and Tallinn (Estonia) are the six European cities and regions that want to ask companies to provide with AI solutions for different mobility and energy challenges, that will ultimately contribute to reduce CO2 emissions and meet their climate commitments. The total funding amount to be divided among the selected suppliers throughout the whole PCP process is EUR 4.6 million.
The ‘Get ready: AI4Cities Bootcamp’ will be organised as the first step or phase 0 of the PCP process to coach motivated participants to write their best applications yet for upcoming tender. Aim of the bootcamp is to coach and spar participating teams about their preliminary solution ideas and application process. During Phase 0 feedback for the tender qualifications will be collected, so participants will have a unique opportunity to impact on the contents of the following tender. In addition to the aforementioned, phase 0 has the following goals:
— to get a better understanding of the state-of-the-art and future developments in order to develop a call for proposals with the optimal scope;
— to gain a broad understanding of all relevant and available users, stakeholders, technologies and possible solutions in the marketplace;
— to consult with the potential companies the validity of the challenge topics and its specifications, as well as to gather feedback on the feasibility of response;
Companies hesitating about participating in this PCP can ask themselves following questions to guide them to right conclusion:
— Are you developing or planning to develop innovative and/or state-of-the-art AI solutions related to energy or mobility?
— Want to grow your understanding of the public procurement application process and learn the best tricks?
Pre-commercial procurement (PCP) focuses on radical innovation and is meant for services, tools or products that are not yet on or close to market. With the support and participation of like-minded cities, a Europe-wide PCP challenge-based competition will be launched.
The PCP focused on procuring R&D development of solutions that support cities transition to carbon neutrality via AI and related enabling digital technologies. Based on this, two key domains linked to the cities’ strategies and carbon-positive goals have been pre-selected and will most likely form the two subchallenges of the PCP action, hereon referred to as lots, which are:
This PCP is done by buyers group, with Forum Virium Helsinki as its lead procurer. Additional buyers group members are: City of Amsterdam, Cap Digital (Paris Region), City of Copenhagen, City of Tallinn and City of Stavanger.
Phase 0 of the PCP process will now start with an open market consultation (OMC), which is the subject of this announcement. During the OMC a large-scale co-creation process will take place in the form of Get ready: AI4Cities Bootcamp based on the underlying premise of applying AI towards solving Cities GHG emissions. Innovative solutions must produce an impact in helping cities reduce their GHG emissions.
After the OMC period and based on its results, a request for tenders (RfT) will be launched December 2020/January 2021. Each selected supplier will be awarded a framework agreement that covers three R&D phases. Number of suppliers reduces with each phase and at the same time funding per supplier will increase within each phase.
1) Phase 1 (concept phase) will focus on the feasibility of the proposed solutions. It aims to verify their conceptual, technological, organisational, regulatory, safety and budgetary feasibility. The expected output from participating companies is a report and presentation. It will also a description of the results of their feasibility studies and their conclusions for the continuation of the development activities in phase 2.


Award value: 4666630