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News article30 January 2025

BBWT showcases public buyers driving a more social, sustainable and innovative Europe

Picture of Helsinki + information on the BBWT annual event

The Big Buyers Working Together (BBWT) annual event, taking place on 24 and 25 March 2025 in Helsinki (Finland) will highlight how public buyers throughout Europe are a key driving force for more social, sustainable and innovative societies. By facilitating panel discussions, interactive capacity building sessions, study visits and collaboration between the members of BBWT's ten Communities of Practice (CoP), the annual event will give participants a better understanding of where strategic and sustainable public procurement in Europe is headed.

24 March is reserved exclusively for the members of the BBWT CoP's. Each CoP will have their own meeting adjusted to the objectives and activities of the group. The activities on 25 March are open to all interested stakeholders. The full programme for the day can be found below:

08:30 - 09:00 - Registrations & Coffee

09:00 - 09:30 - Welcome and introductions

  • Danko Aleksic, BBWT project coordinator, Eurocities
  • Jorma Lamminmäki, Procurement Director, Helsinki City Executive Office.
  • European Commission, Blagoy Stamenov, Project Advisor, EISMEA

09:30 - 10:45 - Panel Discussion: How can public buyers drive a more social, sustainable and innovative Europe?
This panel discussion will engage CoP members to dive into the role public buyers cover in driving a more sustainable, social and innovative Europe. It will be an opportunity to discuss the work done in this regard throughout the project’s CoP's. 

Speakers: 

  • Sami Aherva, Unit Director, Stara, City of Helsinki
  • Rita Campos, Director of the Department of Management and Urban Planning, Municipality of Horta
  • Valentina Schippers-Opejko, Coordinator Urban Agenda Partnership on Innovative and Responsible Public Procurement, City of Haarlem
  • Ioanna Palaiopanou, Public Procurement Economist - Department of Procurement, Athens University of Economic and Business
  • Sophie Carlier, Head of European and Transformationprocurement Programs, Digital & Innovation Department, UniHA.

10:45 - 11:15 - Coffee Break

11:15 - 12:30 - The future of the Public Procurement Landscape
This interactive session aims to gather feedback by the audience for policy makers in light of the revision of the Public Procurement Directives. Public procurement legal expert Abby Semple will present the functioning of the current Directives and will present the functioning of the current Directives and provide predictions/proposals for the future. The presentation will be followed by an interactive session with attendees. Breaking into small groups they will consider the biggest challenges they face, and come up with proposals for how these can be overcome.

12:30 - 13:30 - Networking lunch

13:30 - 15:00 - Capacity Building & Interactive session on the role of Market Dialogues
This session will be led by Eeva-Riitta Högnäs, Senior Legal Counsel of the Association of Finnish Municipalities and it will be split into two parts:

  1. Capacity building (30 mins) on the role of market dialogues and how to best carry them out.
  2. Interactive Session, where the audience will be divided into groups. Each group, in 15 mins, will have to design the best possible market dialogue for a procurement, based on the the topics provided by the expert. Each group will have one reporter who will remain in place. After 15 mins, the groups change places and the new group will continue to develop the idea of the previous group, based on the feedback they receive from the reporter.

For the remaining 15 mins, the reporters will present to the audience the main solutions from their groups.

15:00 - 15:15 - Wrap-up, conclusions, closing of the event 

15:15 - 17:15 - Study visits
Site visits to the Soittaja kindergarten, the tram line to Pasila and Helsinki’s Olympic stadium will give participants the opportunity to see how Helsinki is implementing sustainable, social and innovation procurement in practice. More information about the study visits can be found here. When registering for the final event, participants can select on the registration form which study visit they would be interested in.