25 September 2019

Zurich, Ghent, Frederiksberg and CERN, winners of the Procura+ Awards 2019

Zurich, Ghent, Frederiksberg and CERN, winners of the Procura+ Awards 2019

Image by "Jan Inga Haga", licensed under Copyright

The Procura+ Awards Ceremony saw three cities and a European research organisation going up on the stage to get their recognition for their biggest successes in public procurement: Zurich won in the category ‘Procurement Initiative of the Year’, the City of Ghent in the ‘Sustainable Procurement of the Year’ one, the Municipality of Frederiksberg in the ‘Innovation Procurement of the Year’ category and the European Organization for Nuclear Research won the ‘Outstanding Innovation in ICT Procurement’. The event took place on 24 September within the Nordic Edge Expo in Stavenger, Norway.

The excellence of the innovation partnership for decentralised cloudburst management of the Municipality of Frederiksberg (Denmark) was awarded the ‘Innovation Procurement of the Year’ prize. The market dialogue to inform interested market actors about the procurement of solutions to reduce the load on its existing drain water and the innovation partnership process that was carried out was positively assessed by the jury. “We are very proud to receive this award. The process was not simple but the effort really paid off,” said Lene Stolpe Meyer, Project Manager Climate Adaptation. “We are in stages of implementing the solutions so it feels great to be rewarded now.”

In this category, the runner-up was the City of Helsinki with its sustainable innovation for a retro stadium.

CERN and the City of Helsinki were competing for the ‘Outstanding Innovation Procurement in ICT’ Award. Finally, CERN got the prize thanks to its open cloud data storage innovation through pre-commercial procurement, whereas the City of Helsinki was the runner-up with its robotisation and automation of library services. Bob Jones, Senior Staff member at CERN said that he is “proud that Helix Nebula Science Cloud has shown Europe how world class companies that can develop innovative cloud services. Many companies invested in the pre-commercial procurement actions and I thank them all.”

The City of Zurich (Switzerland) and its initiative to use recycled concrete in buildings was announced as the winner of the ‘Procurement Initiative of the Year’. Zurich has saved around 17,000m3 of virgin materials (and landfill space) through this. The city is now increasing recycled asphalt, with up to 30% recycled material used in new road foundations and 60% reclaimed asphalt in the road base. Wiebke Rösler Häfliger, Director at the Office for Building Construction, City of Zurich said: “We are very proud of our work and it shows that we are working in the right direction. The market has responded positively and our new art museum will be constructed using recycled concrete that includes CO2 reduced cement.”

The runner-up in this category was Ihobe, the Environmental Management Agency of the Basque Government (Spain), thanks to the deployment of a green purchasing programme among the Basque public sector.

The ‘Sustainable Procurement of the Year’ Award went to the City of Ghent (Belgium), that launched a pilot procurement for ethically produced workwear in line with the socially responsible requirements in its procurement policy and worked in partnership with suppliers to get the product required. “We are thrilled that we are able through our public procurement to encourage the market to change in a sustainable way, and that we can share our experience with other purchasing authorities through our toolbox for socially sustainable workwear,” said Aline De Cokere, Public Buyer for City of Ghent. 

The sustainable framework contract for cleaning services of the Catalan Government was the runner-up.

The jury also decided to grant three honourable mentions: to CONSIP (Italy) in the category ‘Sustainable Procurement of the Year’ for the scale and ambition of its national framework contract for sustainable and innovative lighting; to the Dutch Institute for Safety (the Netherlands) in the ‘Innovation Procurement of the Year’ category for a low-cost and potentially replicable solution for wildfire prediction, and to SELECT for Cities in the ‘Outstanding Innovation in ICT Procurement’ for the potential scale and impact of its smart city platform.

Prizes were awarded by the Mayor of Stavanger, Christine Sagen Helgø, and Jugatx Ortiz-Gonzalez, from DG Grow, who thanked all candidates who applied to this edition of the Procura+ Awards showing so many inspiring and diverse examples for other cities and organisations of how to use the power of public procurement.

The City of Stavanger, where the Nordic Edge Expo and the Procura+ Awards Ceremony took place, has been a participant of the Procura+ European Sustainable Procurement Network for over two years and the City’s procurement strategy has a clear focus on innovation and social responsibility.

The Procura+ Awards is an initiative of ICLEI Europe, with support from the EU-funded Procure2Innovate project.