*Host of the 2019 Procura+ Award Ceremony at Nordic Edge*
The City of Stavanger is the fourth largest city in Norway, with 144 500 inhabitants, and Norway’s densest populated municipality. Stavanger is the administrative, economic and cultural centre of Rogaland county and seat for the University of Stavanger, the county governor, county administration and several national and international businesses.
Our “Joint social element of the municipal master plan for new Stavanger 2020-2034” aims at working with three priority areas: Regional powerhouse, daily life quality and green spearhead. Additionally, we will implement the sustainability goals in the whole organisation so that these affects every aspect of public operations.
Stavanger has a long-term development strategy regarding environmental issues, diversity, public health and social security and a long tradition of citizens’ involvement. The Stavanger region is well known as the energy capital of Europe, but is also challenged to change towards a greener and more sustainable branding.
Stavanger’s municipal plan states that all procurement should consider social responsibility as far as possible. This includes climate and environment, ethical trade and circular economy. The city is applying EU innovation procedures to achieve better value for money, sustainability, and social benefits. The City has also developed a new standard called “Knowledge based Procurement” which is applied in most tender processes. Stavanger has experience in national Public Procurement of Innovation (PPI), delivering a new info- and control system for buildings to improve their environmental performance.
Partner in the Norwegian “Innovation Procurement Programme”
Member of the Ethical Trade Initiative, became a Fair Trade City in 2007
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144k Population |
 | 2017 Date joined |
Emilia Tufto - Primary Contact
Legal Adviser in the Procurement Department and responsible for Ethical Trade
Other contacts:
More information? Email procurement@iclei.org
Stavanger’s municipal plan has a clear focus on sustainability, innovation and social responsibility. The city is applying EU innovation procedures to achieve better value for money, sustainability, and social benefits.
In its Climate and Environmental Plan, the City of Stavanger commits to using procurement to achieve sustainability related goals within the community and beyond. Stavanger municipality strives to fulfil its social responsibilities by demanding and consuming goods and services that are produced in accordance with high ethical, social, and environmental standards, across all departements. The procurement practices are in line with the guidance from the Norwegian Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (DFØ) on good environmental leadership. The City’s procurement is also based on circular economy principles wherever possible. Stavanger promotes collaboration on measures and sharing lessons learned in various national and international networks.
Stavanger is a forerunner in applying ethical criteria in its procurement – including the use of targeted selection criteria and award criteria. Since 2010 it has required bidders to document their supply chains with a focus on those contracts which present the greatest risks of human rights violations.
An annual risk assessment is carried out for all upcoming contracts. For some high risk contracts, comprehensive award criteria relating to ethical trade are applied. Stakeholder dialogue are used to prepare the market. During the contract delivery phase, information from third-party systems such as the Ethical Trading Initiative are used, as well as individual supplier meetings and questionnaires.
During the last few years, Stavanger has developed procurements with human rights due diligence as award criteria in some high risk contracts such as ICT and medical supplies. This in accordance with the OECD method of due diligence and responsible business conduct and UNGP.
The award criteria include social dialogue, which is one example of stakeholder engagement. Stakeholder engagement is, in many ways, the core of human rights due diligence. Social dialogue can identify and assess adverse impacts, contribute to cease, prevent and mitigate impacts, track implementation and results and communicate how impacts are addressed in the supply chain. This kind of stakeholder engagement is also relevant when considering the last step in the OECD due diligence model, where companies must provide for or cooperate in remediation when appropriate.
The City Stavanger wants to reach zero emissions on all its construction and building sites, therefore it is working on including zero emission requirements in upcoming tenders. It aims to push the market towards adapting stricter climate and environmental criteria, leading the way for other stakeholders to follow.
To achieve this, the city is working with specific environmental objectives, in close cooperation with environmental consultants, and using environmentally-friendly materials that result in lower emissions and energy consumption. This includes using the BREEAM NOR environmental certification scheme to classify environmental ambitions and produce climate and environmental accounts for both new and renovated buildings. Life cycle costs (LCC) and GHG accounts are prepared for all municipal buildings in their preliminary project phase, and more detailed calculations in the detailed design, tender and building phases, as well as upon completion, are becoming more common.
PUBLIC PROCUREMENT OF INNOVATION (PPI)The City of Stavanger is actively applying PPi to improve the outcome of its procurement, in terms of value for money, innovation, and the environment.
Stavanger has experience from a variety of innovation procurement processes. Innovation partnership within the care sector and a PPI in building management, and a European PCP for public outdoor lighting are among the earlier experiences. From 2020 until the end of 2022 the municipality is engaged along with 5 other European cities and ICLEI in the AI4Cities project – challenging startups, SMEs and others to build and test new AI-based solutions for energy or mobility that can help cities achieve the substantial CO2 emissions reduction which is needed by 2030.
Stavanger is also looking to utilise the concept of Quick tests to help the city reach targets for development. Through a Quick test the municipality has challenged local businesses to provide novel solutions and test them on pressing local issues in a process spanning over 6 months.
Through its experiences with innovation procurement Stavanger finds and builds knowledge regarding new solutions to our challenges. This also helps suppliers building essential experience and knowledge connected to their solutions and helping them to scale up. The experiences with innovation procurement in its different shapes are really good, and Stavanger has defined a strategic target of pushing for even more processes like these in the future.
As a way to bring knowledge and forward thinking into its procurement processes, Stavanger has developed a guide for knowledge based procurement. The focus here is to incorporate elements from innovation procurement and innovation practice into the width of procurement processes, and in this way increasing the effect of the everyday procurement process. By better understanding the real needs leading up to the procurement, having dialogue with suppliers, keeping the specifications as open as possible and infusing methods from innovation and design into its processes, Stavanger is hoping to achieve even better results from procurement in the future. By doing so suppliers to Stavanger will stretch for better solutions, also increasing their competitiveness in the market.
Stavanger’s procurement department has worked with two climate related projects whereas both aims at working systematically with green public procurement. One project focuses on a variety of the municipality’s procurement processes and the other is specifically working towards construction and building environment. Our municipal plan states that we must consider climate, environment and ethical trade in all procurements.
The project has worked to implement systematic and targeted work with green public procurement. Here we have implemented effective methods to safeguard climate- and environment-friendly perspectives in our procurement processes. Amongst other things, we have focused on developing tools that make it easier and more efficient to take care of climate and environment perspectives in procurements. As one of our results, procurements above the EEA threshold focuses on climate and environment in one or several elements of the procurements.
Through this work, we want to influence our own organisation to always consider criteria regarding sustainability, as well as to influence other national and international procurement entities.
In their transition to an emission free city, transport plays an important role for Stavanger's procurement. Wherever possible, all municipality associated companies are requested to choose zero emission vehicles when they procure service vehicles. The cities aims to transition to fossil free taxis, and ensure there are sufficient charging opportunities. In all public tenders and procurements, the goal is to require completely fossil free delivery.
For further information on the activities of Stavanger visit their website:
or email procurement@iclei.org
