On 29th May, 2019 IFKA organized a workshop entitled “Sustainable procurement solutions in the construction sector” with 40 participants including policy and authority actors, public procurement consultants and experts, as well as representatives of companies, bidding companies and small and medium-sized enterprises.
In the first half of the event, after the welcome speech by Eszter Tanka (IFKA) – including an introduction of the TRIS project as a relevant milestone for being here, the participants were able to hear presentations from the invited speakers to get to know more about the policy background. Deputy State Secretary for Public Procurements of the Prime Minister’s Office talked about the situation of green public procurement for innovation in Hungary, and then the head of Hungarian Official Public Procurement Advisors’ Association (HOPPAA) gave on overview of green public procurement legislation and key issues. Thereafter, the Director General of Directorate General for Audit of European Funds shared his audit experiences with the participants. The section was closed by the Secretary General of the Public Procurement Authority who introduced their activities on sustainable public procurement.
The second half of the event was started by Gábor Paksi Dr. (head of HOPPAA’s Green Public Procurement work team). He talked about how the environmental aspects can appear in public procurements of construction investments. During the presentation a conversation, knowledge exchange had already started between the participants which was the main aim of the event. The participants were very communicative, so many ideas, experiences and challenges have been shared and identified.
As a main conclusion, there is a high need for similar forums in the future in order to identify good practices that could really work to foster circular economy and industrial symbiosis as a result of a well-functioning GPP system.
