City of Koprivnica and REA North win Procura Award for Innovation Procurement of the Year

The 2020 Procura+ Awards Ceremony saw two public agencies and two cities gain recognition for their biggest successes in public procurement in four categories. The event took place on 1 October 2020 as part of the Digital Conference “Environmental Considerations in Public Procurement in Europe”, hosted by the German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety (BMU), and the German Environment Agency (UBA).

The city of Koprivnica was one of the four winners and was awarded the prize in the category “Innovation Procurement of the Year”, thanks to their public procurement of innovation for a complete reconstruction of a building, carried out in close cooperation with Regional Energy Agency North. The runner-up in this category was the City of Malmö (Sweden). With this award, we found ourselves in the company of previous winners from the same category: City of Frederiksberg (Denmark) – 2019, City of Rotterdam (Netherlands) – 2018 and Ministry of Defence Netherlands – 2017.

The market dialogue to inform and involve market actors, in this first of its kind partnership in Croatia, to perform an extensive reconstruction of a prefabricated kindergarten building was positively assessed by the jury. “We are truly honoured to receive the Procura+ Award. This type of public innovation procurement is the first to be conducted in Croatia, and being honoured with this award is a remarkable confirmation that we are heading in the right direction,” said Mr Mišel Jakšić, Mayor of Koprivnica, in his thank-you speech during the award ceremony.

This PPI process was prepared and conducted as a part of an EU funded project Prominent MED, Interreg Mediterranean, which the main goal was to test the PPI process in small MED municipalities. The technical part of the project was designed and carried by the synergy of Prominent MED and two other EU projects – C-Track 50, Horizon 2020 and Compose, Interreg MED. C-Track 50 supported the project during the preliminary technical analysis and project designing phase, while the Compose projects provided the project with renewable sources support. The reconstruction consisted not only of energy renovation works but also of a complete reconstruction of the interior, including bathrooms, water supply and drainage system of the building. Due to the main restriction of a maximum of 120 days for project design and reconstruction works (of which a maximum of 80 days for works), the approach required innovative solutions in the form of a Design & Build contract. The project team thus had a very creative job to implement the project, which was a combination of a demanding procurement process and an effective approach to project designing and implementation of works.

The procurement delivered an innovative and replicable solution for external, internal, energy-efficient and functional transformation of a 35-year-old prefabricated wooden kindergarten, and the innovation resulted from the combination of existing materials and basic techniques not previously offered or used in the market.

The final impact of the procurement and the implemented solution was completely transformed and improved kindergarten with an extended lifetime of 25+ more years for the cost of fewer than €500,00 per square meter, which is less than 50% of a cost of a new building. The solution also resulted in 61% savings on heating energy, 66 % savings on primary energy and 66% less CO2 emissions, all per year.

Finally, instead of demolishing the old building and constructing a new one, which both would be a substantial cost, we have achieved one more goal. By transforming and upgrading the building which was considered to be near the end of its useful lifetime, we have diverted from landfill the whole building with a net area of 820 square meters, thus strongly contributing to general sustainability goals in the region.

More information: https://procuraplus.org/awards/