What is public procurement?

Public procurement is the process used by municipalities and other institutions to buy goods, services and works which enable them to deliver their activities.

AT URBACT we see procurement as a strategic lever that cities can use to address the economic, social and environmental challenges they face.

We think procurement could be used to create jobs and apprenticeships, to develop workers skills and reduce carbon emissions. We call this strategic procurement.

How URBACT supports cities to improve their procurement strategies?

In 2015, the work of the PROCURE network paved the way for a future generation of URBACT cities eager to enhance their procurement processes. The core learning from the network was that procurement has to be viewed as a cycle. We called this process “the Cycle of Procurement”.

In 2018, the Making Spend Matter Transfer Network started working on transferring one of the key steps of our cycle called Spend Analysis across seven cities.

Since 2017, URBACT and the City of Preston also started contributing to the Urban Agenda Partnership on Public Procurement pushing forward public procurement as a strategic driver to help public authorities to solve challenges they are dealing with, be they social, economic or environmental. 

URBACT Online Course on Strategic Procurement

About the course

Drawing upon the activities of Procure and Making Spend Matter's cities, URBACT has developed a free online course to equip cities with the knowledge and tools required to embed social and environmental criteria into the process of public procurement and to progress strategic procurement.

Who is this course for?

This free and online training is targeted at anyone with an interest in procurement and changing the way it is undertaken in cities. You could be a Mayor or Politician, a civil servant working in strategy or procurement department, or working in urban and economic development, or someone completely different and willing to learn!

Course structure

The course is made of 14 videos - 7 learning modules and accompanying case studies. It follows the different steps of the procurement cycle (from how to do a spend analysis, all the way to tendering and contract monitoring).

The course will start in March 2021. Videos will be released on a weekly basis throughout the month with side events and activities to continue to exchange with the learning community.

We recommend that you follow the videos in order and dedicate about 2 hours per week in March. But you can also follow the course at your own pace. All videos will be available in the Toolbox for you to go back to.