BUILT CoLAB participated in the preparation of the Manual “Design, construction, rehabilitation and conservation of roads”, within the framework of the Strategy of Ecological Public Procurement, with the contribution of Paulo Fonseca, Executive Director, who also represented the AEC Cluster.
In this Manual, the Ecological Procurement Criteria are defined, within the scope of the Portuguese National Strategy for Ecological Public Procurement, ENCPE 2020, for Road Design, Construction, Rehabilitation, and Conservation.
The coordination of this publication was in charge of IMPIC – Instituto dos Mercados Públicos, do Imobiliário e da Construção, and the edition was the APA – Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente (ENCPE Technical Team 2020).
Due to the importance that this Manual has for sustainability in the AEC sector in particular, and for the climate transition as a whole, as defined in the mission that led to its constitution of BUILT CoLAB, we make this document available here.
You can then read an excerpt from the Introduction that makes up this Manual:
«The criteria for green public procurement under the National Strategy for Green Public Procurement 2020 (ENCPE 2020) aim to assist contracting authorities in the procurement of products, services, and works with reduced environmental impact. The criteria shall be drawn up in such a way that they can be integrated into the parts of the pre-contractual procedure if the entity concerned deems it appropriate.
For the purposes of ENCPE 2020, “Ecological Public Procurement” (CPE) means contracts that integrate into the pre-contractual phase, at least one of the essential criteria presented in this manual, without prejudice to compliance with all environmental requirements legally already provided for. The criteria were drawn up so that they can be (partially or totally) integrated into the parts of pre-contractual procedures. Contracting entities are recommended to check the availability on the market of appropriate alternatives to the subject of public procurement that have a lower negative environmental impact, ensuring compliance with all public procurement legislation, as well as the basic principles of competition, transparency, and equal treatment.
This document presents the CPE 2020 criteria designed to support the “Road Design, Construction, Rehabilitation and Conservation” processes. It is supported by a guidance document explaining how to effectively integrate these EPC criteria into procurement processes. It also contains an attached technical report with additional data on the reasons for choosing these criteria, as well as references for obtaining additional information.
The EPC criteria concern selection criteria, technical specifications, award criteria, and contract performance clauses.
The selection criteria (CS) assess the suitability of an economic operator for the performance of a contract. In the two-stage procedures (prior qualification), they are crucial to determine which economic operators move on to the tender stage, the simple qualification model (all applications that meet the minimum requirements) or the complex qualification model are qualified (applications with the highest capacity are qualified).
Technical specifications (ET)2 have two functions: . describe the contract before the market so that economic operators can decide whether they are interested and thus help determine the level of competition; . quantifiable requirements on the basis of which proposals can be assessed. They are minimum technical and compliance criteria, so proposals that do not comply with them are excluded. With regard to award criteria (CA)3, environmental assessment factors can be applied, provided that: . have a relationship with the subject-matter of the contract; . do not confer on the contracting authority unlimited freedom of choice; . ensure the possibility of effective competition; . are expressly mentioned in the notice of the procedure and in the invitation or in the tender programme, together with their weightings and applicable sub-criteria; And . accordance with the principles applicable to public procurement.
Points may be awarded to proposals to recognize environmental performance that exceeds the minimum level set in the technical specifications. There is no set ceiling for the weighting to be allocated to environmental criteria.
Contract execution clauses (CEC) are used to specify how the contract should be executed. Environmental considerations may be incorporated into the terms of performance of the contract, provided that they are contained in the specifications and relate to the subject-matter of the contract.’
You can read the full document here.
