PSCE BroadGNSS Project Starts Open Market Consultation

The BroadGNSS project started in December 2020 and involves five partners from five European countries: the buyer’s group (France, Finland, Estonia), PSCE (Belgium) as the coordinator, giving its expertise in strategic procurement management and OHB Digital Solutions GmbH (Austria) which provide expert technical support to the consortium.

With a grant of €3.6Million from the European GNSS Agency under Horizon 2020, the consortium will use €2.5Million of the grant for a pre-commercial procurement (PCP). In particular, the three-partner buyer’s group will collectively buy R&D services to develop deployable applications for synchronisation and monitoring of critical mobile broadband communication infrastructure and information assets for PPDR.

The BroadGNSS project follows the success of the BroadMap study (BroadMap), which essentially identified user needs to guide the future procurement of R&D to support the PPDR and critical communications community. These findings proved to be a fundamental input for the subsequent BroadWay PCP, which is currently procuring innovation solutions to develop TRL8 technologies that will enable a pan-European interoperable broadband mobile system for PPDR. In turn, the BroadMap study will continue in BroadGNSS as it brings together European partners to work closely together to procure solutions to its common challenge.

Open Market Consultation

A successful PCP requires involving the relevant technical operators to gain market insight on state of the art and future developments, and to also give them an opportunity to form consortia from early on. In order to achieve this, an Open Market Consultation is organised during which, the BroadGNSS challenge will be presented along with the Pre-Commercial Procurement process. There will also be ample opportunities for open discussions between the three buyers and potential suppliers.

All interested operators are therefore invited to take part in the following activities:

• an Online Questionnaire: open from 2 June 2021 to end of June 2021. The questionnaire will be made available on the project website.
• Online webinar: 2nd June 2021. Details and registration will be available on the project website 3 weeks beforehand.
• and finally, a Partnering Event: 3 November 2021 in Paris if it will be possible to travel (i.e. face-to-face event). If not, the event will be conducted online. Details about the location and registration will be on the project website 3 weeks beforehand.

All additional information relating to the OMC activities are available on the project website: http://www.broadgnss -info.eu/.

During the last quarter of 2021, a request for tender (RFT) will be launched to buy R&D services to develop deployable applications for synchronisation and monitoring of critical mobile broadband communication infrastructure and information assets for PPDR. When the RFT is closed, the PCP will be executed in three phases, ending in May 2024.

In the first phase of the PCP, contractors will develop their designs for solutions and test platforms.

A second phase will include prototype development of the solutions that are evaluated as most promising. This will be followed by a third phase where contractors will deliver pilot solutions and test processes. Eventually one or few of the remaining solutions will be selected for potential commercial roll-out.

More information:

• More information about the project, the OMC activities and the Prior Information Notice (PIN) that officially announced these activities on the OJEU can be found here: https://www.broadgnss-info.eu/
• More details concerning the PCP process can be found here: https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/pre-commercial-procurement
• More details on the BroadWay PCP can be found here: https://www.broadway-info.eu/
• More details on the BroadMap project can be found here: http://www.broadmap.eu/