PCP in a nutshell

Smart.Met will drive the development of advanced smart water metering technologies through a joint Pre Commercial Procurement (PCP), carried out by a group of public water operators. PCP is a competitive multiple-sourcing procedure for procuring research and development services. It involves different suppliers competing in parallel through different phases of development. PCP enables the public demand side to identify the best solutions to address a specific need, by making use of competitive development in phases, risk-benefit sharing under market conditions and a clear separation with possible subsequent market stages.  PCP helps to improve the quality of public services through innovative solutions, increases the efficiency of R&D expenditures, reduces the supplier lock-in and speeds-up the time-to-market for firms.

The PCP launched by the water public operators of Smart.Met aims at the development of a new cost-effective, efficient, interoperable and based on open standard Water Smart Metering. This will allow to identify performance issues, improve customer service and optimize the supply and consumption, both by the water consumer (adapting consumption according to real time data) and by the water supplier (adapting water supply and the network to real time demand).

Smart-Met will follow the PCP principles, referring to i) cost-effectiveness of selected solutions; ii) openness, transparency, fair competition and non-discrimination and iii) respect to ethical considerations regarding suppliers, internal clients and stakeholders.