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Market consultations have a twofold purpose: to inform your tender preparation process and to inform suppliers of your procurement plans. By engaging with the market, cities can assess the capabilities of economic operators to deliver the solution they are looking for and evaluate how feasible their needs are. Furthermore, by inviting interested parties to be involved early on, you improve their capabilities to respond with high-quality applications.
The 2014 Procurement Directive from the European Commission highly encourages Member States to look beyond their own borders in procurement procedures and take advantage of the entire European market. The BABLE Platform community of smart city professionals from across Europe enables cities to reach suppliers in markets they traditionally may not interact with. This mechanism is particularly useful for pre-commercial procurement (PCP) and public procurement of innovation (PPI).
What the Directive calls Preliminary Market Consultations has a variety of names used by cities across Europe. Whether the Market Consultation is preliminary, open, prior, or pre-market, cities are referring to similar concepts. Likewise, if instead of consultation the process is called a dialogue or engagement is immaterial- the goals are the same.
Do you already know what type of innovation you would like to procure? Select the corresponding Solution area and we will directly present you with an automatically generated list of tech providers from all over Europe that specialise in that area.
After that we offer you the possibility to reach out to all of them (and others) by creating a Market Consultation invitation on BABLE.
Not sure which Solution area to pick?
Solution areas on BABLE have been defined after analysing many use cases and Smart City solutions on the market. You can read more about each one of them here.
Preliminary Market Consultations are a way to engage with the market in the early stages of procurement with the goal of improving the procurement process. They can involve extensive dialogue with suppliers or be as simple as a prior information notice about your procurement intentions.
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There are many methods to engage the market in a preliminary consultation. The correct approach should be based on an evaluation of a number of factors including the complexity of the solution looking to be procured, your own team’s knowledge level thereof, the market complexity and maturity, the goals of the procurement procedure such as policy or innovation objectives, and the expected value of the contract. Generally, more complex or innovative procurement procedures would lend themselves to more extensive consultations.
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Carefully review all inputs received during the consultation and incorporate the results in the tender-writing process. Is the budget appropriate? Are the specifications feasible and do they make sense? Will there be enough interest from the market to justify going to tender?
