14 December 2020
The 14th December marks the official kick-off of the BroadGNSS Pre-Commercial Procurement project. This 40-month R&D project involves the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency (European GNSS Agency – GSA) as the granting authority and a consortium of 3 public sector bodies (the buyers group) responsible for public protection and disaster relief:
- French Ministere de l’Interieur (also lead procurer),
- Estonian Riigi Infokommunikatsiooni Sihtasutus (State Infocommunication Foundation)
- Finnish Erillisverkot (State Security Networks Group)
Public Safety Communication Europe (www.psc-europe.eu) is the project coordinator and OHB Digital Solutions GmbH (www.ohb-digital.at) will provide expert technical support to the BroadGNSS consortium.
This PCP will pull innovative solutions from the user-side that will bring higher accuracy and higher reliability EGNSS applications to support public safety communications. It will also contribute to increase Galileo market penetration in the domain of high precision timing and synchronisation.
The BroadGNSS PCP will launch its Open Market Consultation (OMC) after it publishes a Prior Information Notice (PIN) on OJEU. This will involve various activities to enter into dialogue with potential vendors and to consult key government stakeholders across Europe to further scope the specific objectives of the PCP. These events will be published on the PIN and the project website: https://www.broadgnss-info.eu/.
This PCP is also first for the European GNSS Agency, which is the only EU agency working in space and whose core mission is to ensure that European citizens get the most out of Europe’s satellite navigation programmes. The BroadGNSS PCP consortium is enthusiastic about working with the European GNSS Agency to realise this ambitious innovative project.
The BroadGNSS PCP also hope to build on the future sustainability activities of BroadWay PCP, which is currently in phase 2 (Prototype). Further details about this project can be found here https://www.broadway-info.eu/.
Pre-commercial procurement (PCP) is split into 3 phases (Design, Prototype and Pilot). The buyers group will award R&D contracts to a number of competing vendors at the same time in order to compare different approaches to solving the common challenge of all three buyers. This allows successful vendors to improve their solutions for the next phase based on lessons learnt and feedback from the buyers group in the previous phase.
The BroadGNSS PCP consortium has received a grant of €3.6Million from the European GNSS Agency under Horizon 2020 (Grant No. 101004213), of which €2.5Million is reserved for the procurement of innovative solutions to exploit the distinguishing features of the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS), Galileo signals and operational advantages in downstream public safety applications.