Public procurement notice: Prior Information Notice Without Call For Competition
Published: 2016-02-17
Buyer: Digipolis
Country: BE
Contract type: Services
CPV classification: 48000000 | 72000000 | 73000000
Estimated value: 2500000 EUR
EU fund: Horizon Europe

Technical requirements: SELECT for Cities Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) to purchase R&D services for a Standardized, opEn, data-driven, service-oriented user-centric pLatform Enabling large-scale Co-creation, Testing validation of IoE services for Cities.
R&D services to be developed will be integrated with services in Internet of Everything labs operated by the buyer groups, located in Belgium (Antwerp), Finland (Helsinki) and Denmark (Copenhagen).
This PIN is to announce an open market consultation and early announcement of the SELECT for Cities Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) of Standardized, opEn, data-driven, service-oriented user-centric pLatform Enabling large-scale Co-creation, Testing validation of IoE services for Cities. Background information about the PCP and information (Q&A) provided during and as a result of the open market consultation can be retrieved from the Select for Cities website www.select4cities.eu
The common challenge of the SELECT for Cities PCP is the design, research and development of ‘cities as linked and large-scale Internet of Everything labs’. The challenge lies in developing an open, standardized, data-driven, service-oriented and user-centric platform that enables largescale co-creation, testing and validation of urban IoE applications and services. This approach fosters the longer-term goal of evidence-based innovation in cities. The envisaged platform has several requirements, components and features that are currently not available in existing solutions.
The platform must allow collaboration between departments and cities, and (automated) testing of IoE services. The design should be based on an open and modular approach, and support cloud-based, data-driven, service-oriented, user-centric, and co-created large-scale testing. The joint effort of the partners procuring this pre-commercial track lies in guarding the integration capabilities of the platform with all existing and future solutions in interested cities and not limited to the solutions present in the cities participating in the consortium. Particular attention will thus need to be paid to technologies and tools that allow smooth communication and integration between these existing solutions. The end goal of SELECT for Cities is taking the idea of the city as a large Internet of Everything Lab and putting it into practice.
The PCP procurement is expected to start in November 2016 and end in December 2018. Testing is expected to take place in Internet of Everything labs operated by the buyers group, located in Belgium (Antwerp), Finland (Helsinki) and Denmark (Copenhagen). This testing may serve as a first customer test reference for the selected tenderers.
The tenderers selected will retain ownership of the intellectual property rights (IPRs) that they generate during the PCP and will be able to use them to exploit the full market potential of the developed solutions i.e. beyond the SELECT for cities buyers group. With regard to the potential market size for the developed solutions, referral to the following citation can be made: ‘Today 78 % of European citizens live in cities, and 85 % of the EU's GDP is generated in cities. Many European cities are forerunners in the much-needed transition towards a low carbon, resource efficient and competitive economy. Cities are central to delivering on key challenges for Europe's society and economy: jobs, growth and investment, innovation, energy- efficiency, low-carbon development and CO -reduction — to name a few. [...] Linking and upgrading infrastructures, technologies and services in key urban sectors (transport, buildings, energy, ICT) in a smart way will improve quality of life, competitiveness and sustainability of our cities. This is a strong growth market, estimated globally to be worth 1 300 000 000 000 EUR in 2020 — a great export market for European business’ — extract from ‘European context’ of the ‘Market Place of the European Innovation Partnership on Smart Cities and Communities’ (https://eu-smartcities.eu/about/european_context).
In preparation for this PCP, all interested potential tenderers are invited to take part in an open market consultation (regardless of their geographic location, the size or governance structure of their organisation). The open market consultation will start two months after the publishing of this announcement, early April, and will end in June 2016.
This open market consultation will be a crucial stage in the final definition of the PCP challenge, the fine-tuning of the buyers' requirements and the investigation of the market's response to it. It will also provide you with an overview on the procurement objectives, the PCP process and the main clauses of the contract. You will also have the opportunity to ask questions.
— in face to face meetings, namely in Antwerp, Copenhagen and Helsinki). These meetings will take place on the following dates:
Dates maybe be postponed if needed, but always subjected to an advance notification. All dates, venues and registration procedures for the meetings and webinars will be published on the project website, www.select4cities.eu
You can participate in the PCP call for tender even if you did not participate in the open market consultation.
Due to the fact that Digipolis acts as a lead procurer, this PIN is published in English and Dutch (in accordance with article 33 §1 of the Laws dated 18.7.1966 on the use of languages in administrative matters).
The open market consultation, however, will be held in the consortium's language of communication, i.e. English. All information provided during the open market consultation and other background information will be published on the project website in English (www.select4cities.eu), but will be made available in Dutch upon request.
The Select for Cities call for tender will foresee all documents in English (made available in Dutch upon request). Communication on the project website (before, during and after the procurement) will be made available in English (and in Dutch upon request).