# The European Commission acknowledged Forum Virium Helsinki’s public procurement tool as a leading innovation

- Link: https://forumvirium.fi/en/the-european-commission-acknowledged-forum-virium-helsinkis-public-procurement-tool-as-a-leading-innovation/
- Published: 2022-08-19T10:37:44+02:00
- Author: Maija Jokiniemi

Forum Virium Helsinki has developed an easy-to-use tool for evaluating proposals.
The tool helps with evaluating a big number of proposals and lowers the risk of 
making mistakes.

Forum Virium Helsinki has developed [an online assessment tool and process](https://github.com/ForumViriumHelsinki/ApplicationEvaluator)
for public procurement. The tool and process are clear, comprehensive, replicable
and easy to adjust for different kinds of procurements. The purpose of the tool 
is to make evaluation and comparison of proposals easy and agile. It includes graphic
coverage which gives a visual overview quickly. 

The European Commission’s Innovation Radar team has now selected the tool among 
the cutting-edge EU-funded innovations. According to their analysis, the market 
creation potential of the tool is noteworthy. The European Commission has gathered
all the best innovations on the platform at innoradar.eu. The platform builds on
the data gathered by independent experts involved in reviewing ongoing research 
and innovation projects funded by the Commission. 

![screenshot työkalusta](https://forumvirium.fi/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Screenshot-
2022-08-11-at-11.20.38-copy.jpg)

## The experts at Forum Virium built the tool

Forum Virium Helsinki has developed and utilised the tool in the AI4Cities project.
‘
The [AI4Cities](https://ai4cities.eu/) procurement process had three stages. The
evaluation criteria and the group of the evaluators changed from stage to stage.
We had need for a tool that allows quick and light access for the variable number
of evaluators in different stages of the procurement process. Because the tool was
easy to adopt, it lowered the evaluators’ hesitation to join the cause,’ says Project
Manager **Kaisa Sibelius **from Forum Virium Helsinki.

Sibelius says that the number of the proposals was massive in the first phase, and
the project team could not handle the evaluation with Excel sheets as planned. The
risk of mistakes was too great with dozens of people using the same table. 

‘We could not find any suitable ready-made tool to fulfil our needs. Luckily, we
had in-house expertise to build the service in an agile way. The tool is still in
development mode and Forum Virium Helsinki has not yet decided on how to proceed
with it. But it definitely has potential to become a standard,’ Sibelius concludes.

Among Forum Virium Helsinki’s ongoing projects, [SmashHIT project](https://smashhit.eu/)
is also included in the Innovation Radar platform.

_The Horizon 2020 funded AI4Cities project is looking for solutions to reduce carbon
dioxide emissions in cities. The project has completed a process during which companies
have proceeded from designing prototypes to the piloting phase. The best candidates
have been selected from each phase, and seven companies entered the testing phase.
Nearly a hundred tenders were submitted by companies across Europe in the first 
open call._

_This summer, the project has conducted pilots in Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Helsinki,
Paris, Stavanger and Tallinn. It allocated a total of EUR 1.45 million for the pilots._
[ai4cities.eu

[See the Forum Virium Helsinki’s Application Evaluator](https://github.com/ForumViriumHelsinki/ApplicationEvaluator)

innoradar.eu

Photo: One of the AI4Cities pilots in Helsinki takes place at Kaisaniemi School.
Photo by Vesa Laitinen.

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