The Housing and Health Sectors evolve together through Innovative Public Procurement

The European project HAePPI aims to promote the connection between two different industrial sectors, the housing and the health sectors, to collaborate in tenders for innovative public procurement and R&D+i projects.
On 16 and 17 January, it was held the kick-off meeting of the HAePPI project in Aalborg, Denmark. The project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union and coordinated by the Nordjylland Region of Denmark, through the innovation unit in the health area, Idéklinikken.

The objective of the HAePPI project is to develop an Innovative Public Procurement training tool aligned with the needs of SMEs in the housing sector that usually offer hospital equipment. Employees in the housing and health sector companies, for the most part, are unaware of the opportunities that innovative public procurement can offer them and they need an innovative and open training programme. This programme will provide an adapted curriculum that will allow professionals in both sectors (housing and health) to acquire the specific, basic and transversal skills currently required to foster innovation in their companies. The programme will also help expanding their niche market by means of this type of public purchase.

Innovative public procurement (IPP) is an administrative action to promote innovation through public procurement. It entails the acquisition by public authorities of new goods and services introduced for the first time into the market and developed by companies that opt for such a tender.

The development of the IPP is addressed by working on both the demand side, that is, the public manager bidding for innovative public procurement contracts, and the supply side, that is, companies competing in tenders helping them to participate and to submit innovative offers.

At the kick-off meeting, the activities that will be carried out during the first few months of the project’s life were identified. In particular, an analysis of good practices of Innovative Public Procurement (IPP) in Europe will be carried out, followed by a survey to unveil those training needs demanded by SMEs that enable them to acquire the knowledge necessary to participate in innovative public procurement tenders. These results will help the partnership develop the training curriculum for the future course.

The HAePPI project partnership is strategically formed by 6 organisations from different countries with demonstrated experience in achieving the project objectives. The working team consists of two universities with high experience in public procurement policies: the University of Zaragoza, responsible for the management of the Observatory of Public Procurement (ObCP) and the University of Lodz in Poland. Two clusters, which directly receive the objectives of the project: the Innovative Business Association of Furniture Manufacturers and Related in the Region of Murcia (AMEBLA) and IVITA – a health cluster of Lithuania. The Styrian Technology Park of Slovenia, experts in innovation management and, last but not least, the public entity and project coordinator, the Nordjylland Region of Denmark.

With a total duration of 24 months, the HAePPI project receives a total funding of €324,031 from the European Commission.