Innovation and public procurement law – a contradiction?
Projects that receive public funding are regularly subject to formal procurement law, the regulations on public procurement. At first glance, the formal regulations and an innovation – in this case the erection of the carbon reinforced concrete building CUBE – seem to be in conflict. However, there are sufficient exceptions in public procurement law that allow for a flexible award procedure while observing the principles of public procurement law, such as equal treatment, transparency or proportionality. The article describes how the procedure was organized, what intermediate steps, difficulties and changes were made and how the procedure was ultimately successfully concluded. Decisive for this success was the close, transparent, and leading cooperation of all parties involved, as well as the willingness to repeatedly adapt the process to the required scope of services, the construction methodology, and the construction technology and time schedule.