Sustainable procurement support services set to be tendered by city authority
A new notice for support services at a central contracting office highlights how city administrations are embedding sustainable criteria across their buying.
A new notice for support services at a central contracting office highlights how city administrations are embedding sustainable criteria across their buying.
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Barcelona Activa SAU SPM has flagged a new phase in the city’s sustainability drive with a prior information notice for support services to the Strategic Contracting Office of the City Council of Barcelona. The planned contract focuses on sustainable public procurement measures, indicating that the council wants dedicated support to embed sustainability into how it plans and manages its purchasing. Published on 11th December 2025, the notice points to growing demand for specialist advice and operational support around sustainable buying within European city administrations.
The notice for support services for the Strategic Contracting Office is short, but the emphasis is clear: support is needed specifically for the Strategic Contracting Office of the City Council of Barcelona, and that support is to focus on sustainable public procurement measures. Rather than targeting a single project or department, the city is signalling that sustainability should be addressed at the strategic centre of its contracting activity.
Locating sustainability expertise in a central office matters because this is where overall procurement strategies, frameworks and major competitions are typically coordinated. When sustainable public procurement is handled at this level, it becomes easier to translate high-level commitments into consistent requirements, award criteria and contract management across many different services and sectors.
The Barcelona notice does not yet set out the detailed tasks that the provider will perform. However, comparable procurements elsewhere suggest the kinds of functions that are being formalised. In August 2025, Bruxelles Environnement launched a contract for facilitators to support implementation of its Sustainable Public Procurement Strategy of Shifting Economy, including a helpdesk, training and the development of tools for buyers, according to its Facilitators for Sustainable Procurement tender. Barcelona’s move to secure support services for its Strategic Contracting Office sits within this wider investment in dedicated capacity to help internal teams put sustainable public procurement into practice.
The new support services are not appearing in a vacuum. Over recent months, multiple entities linked to the City Council of Barcelona have issued tenders that either focus on, or explicitly incorporate, sustainable public procurement measures. They cover areas as diverse as security, finance, infrastructure, digital services, events and social programmes, suggesting that sustainability is being woven into the fabric of everyday contracting.
Recent examples include:
By late 2025, the language of sustainable public procurement is also present in cultural and sports events and in neighbourhood-level social programmes. In November 2025, Institut Barcelona Esports advertised services for the design, organisation, production and direction of the official presentation gala for teams for the Grand Départ Barcelona 2026, explicitly stating that the event will incorporate sustainable public procurement measures (Official Presentation Gala Services). In December 2025, the Nou Barris district’s programme supporting senior citizens similarly builds in sustainable public procurement measures as part of its delivery model (Senior Citizens Program).
Taken together, these notices show that sustainable public procurement is no longer confined to specialist environmental projects. It now appears in specifications for security master plans, tax advice, vehicle tyres, shade structures, websites, major cultural programmes and social initiatives. The planned support for the Strategic Contracting Office will have to make sense of this breadth, helping to ensure that sustainability commitments are applied coherently across very different categories of spend.
One of the clearest bridges between sustainable procurement and climate policy in the city is a contract notice published in November 2025 for a technical secretariat to support the establishment of strategic alliances focused on sustainable public procurement measures (Technical Secretariat for Climate Action). The project is framed explicitly around climate action in Barcelona, but the mechanism it relies on is procurement: building alliances and coordination structures so that contracts can advance climate-related objectives.
This climate-focused tender sits alongside other strategic projects that also weave in sustainable public procurement. The Comprehensive Security Master Plan and the geology, geotechnics and subsoil survey services framework launched by Barcelona d’Infraestructures Municipals, SA in October 2025 both incorporate sustainable public procurement measures (Geology and Geotechnics Services). So do infrastructure-related investments such as shade systems for public spaces. In each case, the sustainability agenda is being tied to long-term planning tools that will shape how the city develops, secures and maintains its assets.
Beyond explicitly sustainability-branded tenders, other Barcelona public bodies are also using external teams to manage complex change programmes. In July 2025, the Mar Parc de Salut de Barcelona Consortium issued a call for support to manage projects linked to its systems and digital transformation plan (Support Service for Project Management). In December 2025, the Municipal Institute of Social Services sought services for the evolution, systematisation and consolidation of collective attention in its social services centres (Support Services for Social Centers). Together with the new procurement support services, these contracts suggest that the city is increasingly turning to specialist providers to underpin major operational and policy shifts.
Against this backdrop, the forthcoming support services for the Strategic Contracting Office are positioned to play a coordinating role. By concentrating expertise at the point where procurement strategies and major competitions are designed, the city can work towards aligning climate action projects, infrastructure frameworks, events and everyday supplies under a shared approach to sustainable public procurement. How far the new services will focus on policy advice, training, transaction support or monitoring will only become clear once a full contract notice is published, but the intention to reinforce the strategic centre of procurement is already evident.
The Barcelona notice also reflects a broader European pattern of administrations seeking specialised help to modernise their procurement. As well as the Bruxelles Environnement facilitators contract, cities are experimenting with new forms of market engagement and internal support. In December 2025, the Municipality of Amsterdam’s engineering bureau opened a market consultation for its city hall project, aiming to inform stakeholders about the upcoming assignment and to gather insights on market parties’ capabilities and ambitions related to the project’s objectives (Market Consultation for City Hall). In December 2025, the Greek public broadcaster Elliniki Radiofonia Tileorasi Anonymi Etairia (E.R.T. A.E.) issued a tender for administrative support services that includes assistance in public procurement procedures and financial management control (Administrative Support Services Procurement).
Across these examples, the common thread is that procurement is being treated as a discipline that merits its own specialist services—whether as facilitators and helpdesks, technical secretariats, administrative support teams or consultancy for central contracting offices. In Barcelona’s case, the prior information notice signals to the market that sustainable public procurement is now a core concern of its Strategic Contracting Office, and that the council is preparing to invest in external support to match. When the formal competition is launched, bidders and observers alike will be watching how the city defines the balance between strategy, capacity-building and day‑to‑day support, and how that, in turn, shapes the next wave of tenders carrying sustainable public procurement measures through the system.
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