At the invitation of the Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development, the representatives of REA North presented to the OECD mission their experience in the public procurement of innovations at a meeting held on March 16, 2023, in Zagreb at the premises of the Ministry.
The Ministry organized this OECD mission in cooperation with HAMAG-BICRO.
The mission aimed to exchange knowledge and experience with Croatian stakeholders so that the OECD could find an appropriate approach to procurement development corresponding to the Croatian system and specifics within the framework of defining future steps.
The managing director of the agency, Ivan Simic, and the project manager, Denis Premec, explained in detail to the representatives of the OECD mission what challenges the agency faced when participating in the Prominent MED project.
During that project, REA North procured innovative solutions for the energy renovation project of the Loptica kindergarten building in Koprivnica and received the Procura+ European award for public procurement of innovations in 2020.
Representatives of the OECD mission Matthieu Cahen, Sanda Jugo, and Masayuki Omote learned from REA North which operational solutions were applied in defining needs, market research, communicating with potential solutions suppliers, and the public procurement process itself.
At the meeting, opinions were also exchanged on improving policies that would more intensively support the future public procurement of innovations in Croatia.