On February 19th 2019, a Request for Tender was published by the BroadWay project to procure a system to enable a Pan-European interoperable broadband system for Public Safety.
Crime and disasters are not limited to fixed geographical borders, and there is a necessity for European first-responders to be able to communicate, share and access information regardless of the country they intervene in. This is the challenge tackled by the BroadWay project, a team consisting of 11 procurers from 11 European countries which have come together to procure innovation activity to enable a pan-European broadband mobile system for Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR).
Through a pre-commercial procurement process, The BroadWay has ambitions to find innovative solutions that surpass the current minimal operability and bring it to the next level where there is cross-border interoperability between national agencies.
This challenge is divided into the following 11 objectives which are set out in the Request for Tender:
So far, more than 60 innovative suppliers have expressed interest in participating to the RFT.
“We are really grateful for the valuable feedback received from potential suppliers during our open market consultation. It’s now time to convert that into tenders for the development of designs, prototypes and a pan-European pilot to help our team to understand the ‘real’ possibilities to enable new pan-European mobile broadband capabilities for our crime fighting and life saving responders across Europe.” David Lund (PSCE) – BroadWay Coordinator
What’s next?
When the Request for Tenders is closed, the Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) process will be executed in three phases: Solution Design, Solution Prototype and Pilot. Pre-Commercial Procurement challenges industry to develop innovative solutions for public sector needs and it provides a first customer reference that enables companies to create competitive advantage on the market.
The first phase of PCP process is a feasibility study of the selected technologies and proposals. Then, the most promising concepts will be developed into well-defined prototypes in phase 2. Phase 3 aims to verify and compare the first end products in real-life situations. Finally, the selected prototypes will be tested.
Join the webinar and briefing event
In order to support the tendering process, the BroadWay consortium will host a briefing webinar on March 15th 2019 as well as a briefing event on March 26th 2019 in Brussels. During these events, the Request for Tenders documentation and process will be explained. There will be also plenty of opportunity to ask questions. Save the date and register here for the Webinar or Briefing event.
The Request for Tenders will be open until 3rd June 2019. The documents are available on the BroadWay website in the output section together with detailed tendering guidelines. However, tenders must be submitted on www.publicprocurement.be.
The BroadWay Project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and development programme under Grant Agreement No. 786912.
