Good practice:

Open tenders to innovate in technology (PPI): Case of efficiency houses for social housing (nZEISHB)

Since social housing is managed by public entities, the PPI is a way of providing energy efficiency to such housing for vulnerable groups.

The PPI is a public policy aimed at making strategic use of the significant volume of government procurement as a driving force for SMEs, entrepreneurs and companies to make technological choices to meet public sector needs that do not find answers in the market, and for which tendering procedures required are different to the ordinary ones. This is a novel formula based on public-private collaboration that is implemented through public tendering processes.

An example is the Near Zero Energy Industrialised Social Housing Building (nZEISHB) project promoted by AVRA which aims to meet the challenge of the Andalusian public administration to build subsidised social housing with almost zero energy consumption: a modular and flexible system of industrialised multi-family subsidised housing with almost zero energy consumption, as well as the necessary processes for its integration and implementation in multi-family subsidised housing buildings with almost zero energy consumption.

The nZEISHB project promotes a social construction system that values affordable housing, makes buildings adapt to the climatic conditions of each area, withstand the high temperatures of summer but also the cold of winter, and do so with low energy consumption. And of course, reducing energy

AVRA, as a public housing developer, is responsible for the project, which combines three key components of the 2020-2050 strategy: social inclusion, decarbonisation and productive innovation. Its budget amounts to 2.8 million euros.
The nZEISHB project is 80% co-financed by the European Regional

- Preliminary market consultation successfully completed in order to gather ideas and innovative solutions from economic operators and other knowledge agents to solve the needs raised by AVRA in order to advance in the process of defining the future tender for the project.
- Reduction of CO2 emissions of around 30%, while with the industrialised implementation system, there will be savings in materials and substantial reductions in both the carbon footprint and construction waste.

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This good practice is replicable to any territory of the European Union. It is an example of a public policy model aimed at making strategic use of the significant volume of government procurement as a driving force for SMEs, entrepreneurs and companies to make technological choices to meet public sector needs that do not find answers in the market, and for which different tendering procedures are required. It has the dual purpose of encouraging innovative activity in the business sector and contributing to the modernisation of the Administration through the introduction of new technologies and processes.

All this is very useful to apply to bids for social housing, achieving better energy benefits in them.