Procurement of innovative transport and mobility solutions will contribute to reduced negative impacts by transport on the environment, improve congestion and other unwanted traffic events, contribute to the economic growth and European industry’s competitiveness, as well as - not least - the quality of life of European citizens.
The SPICE project has aimed at improving capabilities among public authorities and procurers in the field of procurement of innovative, sustainable transport and mobility solutions in Europe. With this aim, SPICE has collected, analysed and disseminated best practises from across Europe thereby facilitating adoption of novel procurement practises subject to the new European procurement directives from 2014.
The impact of the SPICE findings has already become apparent by the interest the findings seems to have gathered among procurers and policy makers on the regional, national and EU level. Among other things, the legal findings of the SPICE project will be incorporated into larger projects with longer durability, including the “Partnership on Innovative and Responsible Public Procurement” under the Urban Agenda for the EU (
https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/urban-agenda(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)). In this way, both the SPICE publications themselves and their contribution to larger bodies of work will bring about more awareness of the large variety of tools, templates, strategies and methods available for procurers. The general problem seems to be that, among other things, procurers do not usually adapt their procurement methods to the differing circumstances of the challenges faced and solutions wanted. Rather, procurers generally tend to use the same or similar procurement template for each procurement disregarding the differences in scale and form of the procurement and solution wanted. For this reason, making procurers aware of the multitude of tools available under the framework of the procurement directives and how these can be combined to accommodate different solutions wanted, will be of great benefit.
The SPICE project also aims to have direct benefit for procurers themselves by publishing the "D5.6 White Paper on SPICE Recommendations" in a PowerPoint format that can be easily browsed and used for in-house peer-to-peer dissemination of the SPICE findings after the project lifetime. Additionally, the SPICE team has cooperated with the CAPITAL capacity building platform to create e-learning tool (videos & syllabuses) for current and future procurers to learn about the SPICE project findings.