The project “S-ACCESS – Smes ACCESS to international public procurements” is a European pilot-project co-funded under the COSME programme of the European Union. The project aims to develop innovative approaches for helping SMEs of the Rail supply industry go international participating in international public procurements.
DITECFER Coordinator is the Coordinator of the project.
The project partners are DITECFER (Italy) and the railway clusters i-Trans (France), Rail.S (Germany), MAFEX (Spain), Järnvägsklustret (Sweden), RCSEE (Serbia) and University of Birmingham-BCRRE Railway Innovation Cluster (United Kingdom).
The project answers the European political mission to help SMEs participate in public procurements in countries outside-EU, exploiting the opportunities disclosed by the free trade agreements and other trade agreements signed by the EU.
The project target-countries are USA, Canada and Norway.
On the one side, the project aims to give concrete answer to the typical obstacles block SMEs from exploiting the tenders potential, by developing specific innovative tools. On the other side, the project will develop an internationalisation strategy and an implementation roadmap to help SMEs benefit from the opportunities provided by the CETA agreement (EU-Canada), by the new CUSMA agreement (Canada-USA-Mexico) and by the Economic Agreement EU-Norway, thanks to which the latter implements the EU rules on public procurements, as well as its technical specifications.
The project will last 36 months and is divided in two phases:
- a Preparatory Phase lasting 15 months, where the partners will develop solutions for each type of obstacle;
- an Implementation Phase lasting 21 months, where the partners will test their strategy and assist the SMEs on the field.
Website: https://s-accessproject.eu
Twitter: SACCESS_EU