Suppliers

The RCI Consortium refers to the term "suppliers" when it refers to the providers and manufacturers of road charging technologies and in-vehicle platforms that potentially might join the current Consortium in the existing RCI contract for the implementation of the RCI prototypes.

RCI has started its work without the involvement of such suppliers. Although several suppliers worked together with the current Consortium partners during the proposal development stage (when the RCI project was being defined), they have not yet been included in the contract. This is due to the need to clarify the implementation tasks based on agreed requirements and high level architecture before the allocation of tasks and budgets for the RCI prototype implementationcan be justified.

In the meantime, the consortium will ask interested and appropriate European suppliers, to establish small consortia to propose potential participation and commitment to the RCI project.

Description of public process finding suppliers

The process of soliciting and selecting (consortia of) suppliers will include the following stages:

1. Expression of interest
2. Offering
3. Evaluation and selection
4. Start of the real work

STAGE 1: EXPRESSION OF INTEREST

start: Refer to Suppliers Planning
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­The RCI project coordinator asks interested suppliers to complete an Expression of Interest form that implies a statement of interest in joining a consortium of suppliers in order to become an RCI consortium member and to develop and implement the RCI road charging OBE. By no means this document can be considered as legally binding the existing consortium to any obligation neither can any signed EoI be considered as legally binding a supplier to any further obligation.

This EoI should include the contact details of one person that can be contacted by the RCI consortium and/or by other interested suppliers for further information. For that purpose, the project coordinator will list all suppliers contact details and regularly send the updated status of that list to all suppliers that are on it.

­By the end of 2005, the RCI consortium will define additional details on the tasks that need to be carried out by suppliers that would join the RCI consortium as well as on the requirements and High Level Architecture of the RCI prototype and evaluation criteria of the selection process. In addition the RCI consortium will make available a document that can be filled in by interested (consortia of) suppliers for making an offer for joining the RCI consortium; that document will include guidelines. Interested suppliers that do not submit a signed EoI at the project coordinator (ERTICO) by the end of stage 1 at the very latest, will be excluded from the next stages.

STAGE 2: OFFERING

start: Refer to Suppliers Planning
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Interested suppliers complete the documents that define their offer. Templates for these documents will be provided by the RCI Consortium.

STAGE 3: EVALUATION AND SELECTION

start: Refer to Suppliers Planning

­External evaluators, who are not members of the RCI consortium, will evaluate the completed document that describes the offers on how (consortia of) suppliers would be committed to fulfill tasks in the RCI project. The selection of (consortia of) suppliers will be subject to approval by the EC and the RCI Steering Committee. (It is expected to grant contracts to two consortia of suppliers).

If the EC and/or the RCI Steering Committee should consider there is no consortium (or only one) meeting the selection criteria, the Steering Committee will decide if and how the selection process needs to be extended and modified, and if the RCI Consortium partners will be allowed to participate in this extended selection process, and to submit or join an offer for prototype implementation. In this case, the evaluation and selection process will be rescheduled, extending the deadline of the overall process by eight weeks.

STAGE 4: START THE REAL WORK AND CONTRACT AMENDMENT

start: Refer to Suppliers Planning
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The selected (consortia of) suppliers will immediately start the work on the RCI project in parallel with the process of contractually joining the RCI consortium, by approving and signing up the RCI contract and the RCI Consortium Agreement (the Consortium Agreement has not yet been finalised, but a draft version is available to suppliers that submit an EoI).

Evaluation Criteria

The following list provides the preliminary overview of important criteria that will be used by external evaluators for selection of (consortia of) interested suppliers for joining the RCI consortium:

• ­Expertise in all required disciplines for development and integration of tolling and taxing applications
• ­Expertise in all required disciplines for the production of on-board equipment (OBE) that support tolling and taxing applications in the in-vehicle environment
• ­Expertise in all required disciplines for the development and implementation of an software environment that supports multiple software applications to be active simultaneously and the life-cycle management thereof
• ­Proven track record in European market implementation of on-board equipment (OBE) and road charging application software
• ­Commitment to exploitation of the results of the RCI project by commercial market implementations
• ­Acceptance of the contract made between the EC and the RCI consortium and contractual conditions applicable
• ­Acceptance of the Consortium Agreement
• ­Committment to achieve the objectives of the project and to task definition (preliminary described by the Public description of the RCI project)
• ­Committment to accept that IPR (Intellectual Property Rights) will be applicable to how RCI system specifications have been implemented and that all specifications of the RCI system that will be defined by the RCI project will be free of IPR or other restrictions during and after the project’s lifetime
• Maximum required funding for completion of all required tasks by one (consortium of) supplier(s) should not exceed €1 million (roughly €2 million costs).