Open Market Consultations

As part of the preparation for an innovation driven procurement action, the market consultation involves the proactive analysis of technology offer and provides a pre-information to the market in order to give a congruous time for the preparation of fit-for-purpose proposals. The STARS prior information notice (PIN) sets out the procurement process and provides potential suppliers with as much information as possible ahead of the open market consultation meetings. The PIN was published in November 2017.

The STARS market consultation had these following goals:

• find out whether technologies are commercially available and acquire information about the advantage and disadvantages and the level of coverage of the desired functionalities, in order to confirm the assumption for PCP;

• enable and increase the opportunities for industry to form fit-for-purpose consortia;

• identify market risks potentially able to endanger business goals and supplier performance.

The market consultation sessions were conceived and organized with regard to the principles of openness, transparency, non-discrimination and equal treatment, in line with European procurement law. The market consultation was conducted in the form of open and oral consultations (bilateral, interactive and open workshops). A written contribution (e.g., in the form of a questionnaire aimed to collect market information on innovative and commercialized solution) could be provided by the participants, to form the basis for more in-depth analysis and assure the confidentiality on the information and solutions described.

The open market consultations of the STARS project have been visited by over 50 companies in five various locations:

• Ancona, Italy - 18 January 2018

• Mülheim a/d Ruhr, Germany - 24 January 2018

• Maastricht, the Netherlands - 25 January 2018

• Cordoba, Spain - 31 January 2018

• Barcelona, Spain - 2 February 2018