What is it?

Pre-commercial procurement (PCP) is a means to stimulate the market to deliver the innovation and solutions you want. Through PCP, you can commission R&D services from multiple suppliers, who develop alternative solutions in parallel for your service needs. You are then able to test these prototypes and MVPs to determine which best meets your service needs and offers the best value for money.

The PCP process consists of multiple phases, with suppliers being eliminated at each phase. The budget per bidder increases every round to reflect the resources needed for further development. The phases of PCP include, open market consultation, call for tender, solution design, prototype development, testing of a limited volume of products/services. PCP covers the development of products up to the prototyping and testing phase, but not beyond.

There are limits on the quantity of the prototypes that can be purchased for the purposes of testing and piloting.

After the PCP process, you need to go to tender for commercial volumes of your preferred solution. This tender process must be competitive and must not disadvantage suppliers who were not involved in the PCP process.

Why does it matter?