Day of the contracting authorities: Innovative procurement instruments in focus

The opportunities offered by innovative public procurement procedures were the focus of this year's "Public Contracting Authority" in Berlin. How Innovation Partnership, Competitive Dialogue and Performace Based Contracting work in practice was explained in lectures and in a panel discussion. In the panel discussion on "What should public procurement expect in the future?", It became clear, among other things, that innovative procurement is characterized by the fact that performance is important. The supplier should be able to propose the way to achieve the target.

After the discussion, Dr. Thomas Solbach, Head of Unit Public Procurement, Auditing, Real Estate, Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, the opportunities of public procurement law and how they can be used strategically to increase the procurement of innovations. His conclusion: Procurement law not only sets limits, but also offers all possibilities to implement innovative procurement in practice.
Awarding instrument "Innovation Partnership" in focus

Experiences with the instrument "innovation partnership" presented Esther van Engelshoven, awarding body, department of transport contracts and quality, Land Schleswig-Holstein. The Nahverkehrsverbund Schleswig-Holstein GmbH uses the innovation partnership in a project for the procurement of trains with innovative drive. According to Engelshoven, this method initially requires more effort than a classical procurement procedure. However, this is justified, above all, in projects if the need can not be satisfied by a solution already on the market.

Under the motto "Innovative Contract Models in Public Procurement" Prof. Dr. Ing. Michael Eßig, Professor of Materials Management and Distribution - Research Center for Law and Management of Public Procurement, University of the Federal Armed Forces Munich, Germany, presented the relatively newly applied Performance Based Contracting in public procurement. According to Eßig, there is an advantage in the fact that suppliers and service providers have a high interest in providing an excellent quality within the framework of an incentive-based contract. On the other hand, part of the risk can be taken over by the supplier or service provider in performance-based contracting. Eßig joined his previous speakers in appealing not only to rate an offer on the basis of price, but also to pay attention to cost-effectiveness.
Excellent procurement of innovations

The highlight of the afternoon was the presentation of the prize "Innovation Generates Vorsprung 2018", which was awarded twice this year to the Berlin City Cleaning Company. This novelty founded jury member and chief executive of the BME, Dr. med. Silvius Grobosch: "The excellent concepts show innovative procurement at a high level, for example the implementation of instruments such as the competitive dialogue, which are brought into focus by the amendment of public procurement law."

All presentations of the speakers as well as the winning concepts of the competition "Innovation creates advantage" can be downloaded here.