On the 19th of December 2018, University of Patras, the Lead partner, held the 4th stakeholder group meeting of the GPP4Growth project.
The meeting commenced with the welcome address from Professor Christos Bouras, Vice Rector of the University of Patras (UPAT), professor in the Computer Engineering & Informatics Department and scientific coordinator of UPAT for GPP4Growth project who also made a brief presentation of the project outcomes in the past year and what is expected to be done in the following months.
Next, a presentation was given by Georgios Diles, postdoctoral researcher and part of the GPP4Growth project team. The main focus of his presentation was Life Cycle Cost (LCC). He presented the benefits that can be harvested by LCC in public procurement and described two common practical examples in procurement and how the calculation of LCC would be done. The examples referred to street lighting and vehicle LCC calculation. He later presented two available tools that could be used in LCC calculation for these two cases.
Next, Mrs. Maria Diamantopoulou, head of the financial and fiscal control department of Region of Western Greece (UPAT’s policy instrument for GPP4Growth) gave a speech concerning the actions of the Region of Western Greece in public procurement that had environmental benefits. She spoke about the scheduled change in street lights with LED bulbs, the upgrade in energy efficiency in several schools of the region and the upgrade in the Region’s buildings by installing energy efficiency meters.
The final speech was given by Mrs. Stiliani Paraskeua, Kalliopi Anifantaki, representatives of the Hellenic Single Public Procurement Authority, who presented the situation in Greece regarding the regulations in applying GPP approaches. They talked about the exact laws that allow and promote GPP and the possible approaches in GPP, such as joint procurement, green criteria etc. They also provided information about the upcoming action plan by the Greek state regarding GPP.
An open discussion followed, coordinated by Professor Ch. Bouras. Most of the participants, considered that the concept-idea of the project is extremely interesting as well as one of great importance and emphasized that the regional authorities, enterprises, businesses, SMEs, industry, research and academic institutions need to work with each other to enhance GPP and provide suggestions for the legal framework to be strengthened and increase the success of the GPP. All agreed on the importance of LCC in procurement and how it can help organizations save a large percentage of their budget. Most participants agreed that the procurement framework has some gaps that need fixing or clarifying.
