News

Major European Grant Success for DCU Business School

26 January 2010

DCU Business School in partnership with Bangor University Law School and the Irish Institute of Purchasing and Materials Management have won a 3.7m EU funded project, 'Winning in Tendering'. This major award against international competition, will be funded until the end of 2013 by the EU's Ireland/Wales INTERREG Innovation and Competitiveness programme.

The project is expected to have a major impact on the cross-border economy in terms of wealth generatoin, employment integration, and in terms of generating more and better jobs, thus aligning with the Europe 2020 agenda.

The project was ranked number 1 in the extensive evaluation process. Also during project development, Winning in Tendering received major expressions of support from leading key stakeholders in both countries, including IBEC, Enterprise Ireland, the National Procurement Service (OPW), An Garda Siochana, Wexford County Council, Irish Software Association as well as the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), Value Wales Procurement (Welsh Assembly Government), Wales Council for Voluntary Action (WCVA), Federation of Small Businesses (FSB), the Department of Enterprise and Transport (WAG). These stakeholders will assist in supporting the "Winning in Tendering" project's implementation, and esure its sustainability in the post-funding period.

INTERREG have designated the 'Winning in Tendering' project as Strategic in nature, reflecting the potential international transformational impact of the project. 'Winning in Tendering' will examine and devise methods which have the potential to transform the cross-border small indigenous supplier community's capacity and capability to win public sector tenders. Also, Winning in Tendering has the potential to revolutionise the cross-border public procurement culture by re-engineering public procurement practices thus aligning them with SIS vulnerabilities.

The 'Winning in Tendering' project was also singled-out as Strategic in status because of its potential to influence policy and because of the 'Winning in Tendering' methodologies' application to other European economies, particularly the Accession States that are likely to benefit most from knowledge transfer of Winning in Tendering research and outputs.

The project will develop the first ever SIS-friendly procurement Competency Framework, which may well supplant and replace existing procurement competency frameworks currently used by public purchasers as it will be based on an entirely new qualitative and quantitative design approach. It is expected to prove a catalyst in ensuring public procurers adopt an approach that provides a level playing field for smaller suppliers.

'Winning in Tendering' research will also lead to the greater uptake of effective, transparent, lower value procurement practices, thus providing more contract opportunities of the perfect size for smaller suppliers that are prominent throughout the cross-border area.

What was particularly attractive about this project to the INTERREG evaluators is that many of its innovative outputs will be readily transferrable to other European Union Member States, in particular, most interest will probably come from the Accession States.