IV.A.4.1 Common activities for monitoring PCP and PPI

• Conduct regular supplier monitoring
  • Require periodic technical and financial reports from suppliers.
  • Conduct regular progress reviews and structured meetings, virtual or on site, maintaining formal and traceable communication.
  • Maintain a Q&A log capturing supplier questions and Monitoring Team responses, including publication and response procedures. Ensure equal treatment and equal and transparent distribution of information.
  • Evaluate deliverables and milestones using predefined criteria and scoring grids.
• Assess performance and manage risks
• Identify and track technical, financial, and legal risks and monitor resource allocation.
• Provide qualitative feedback to suppliers based on documented evidence.
• Recommend continuation, adjustment, or termination of contracts in line with agreed decision rules and contractual conditions.
• Trigger escalation procedures when critical deviations occur and propose corrective actions, verifying implementation and follow up.
• Document all decisions, evaluations, and communications for audit compliance.
• Coordinate reporting and ensure compliance
• Deliver regular updates to the Contracting Authority and the Steering Committee, if applicable.
• Coordinate with the Project Office Department and any external advisory bodies where relevant.
• Generate evidence materials, demonstrations, videos, reports, presentations, to support validation by funding bodies where relevant.
• Ensure compliance with funding and procurement requirements throughout all phases.

IV.A.4.2 Monitoring the PCP procedure throughout the phases

• On the completion of each Phase, the suppliers will be evaluated. Assess whether the results are satisfactory and which suppliers achieved the successful completion of the Phase. Invite the successful providers to bid for the contracts of the next Phase. This opens a mini-tendering competition between successful suppliers. The best scoring offers are awarded a contract for the next Phase.
• Make use of exclusion, selection and award criteria for the evaluation of the bids for the contracts of Phase II and III. It is common use that the exclusion and selection criteria remain the same throughout the competitive phased process, whereas the award criteria can become progressively more specific per Phase.

IV.A.4.3 Monitoring the PPI procedure

• Ensure the supplier’s compliance with contractual obligations during the implementation of the PPI solution.
• Evaluate the supplier’s performance against a pre-determined list of KPIs.
• Beware of contract modifications during the implementation: a substantial modification of the contract requires a new procurement procedure.

IV.A.4.4. Payments

• For PCP, link payments to the satisfactory completion of a Phase, which will be evaluated by the monitoring team. Make suppliers aware that receiving a payment after the satisfactory completion of a phase, does not mean that they will be awarded a contract for the next Phase. Deliverables must be formally assessed and approved before payments are authorised.
• For PPI, link payments to the satisfactory and successful achievement of pre-determined KIPs, which will be evaluated by the monitoring team. Payment mechanisms may include staged payments, performance-based payments or retention schemes to ensure continued compliance. If the delivered innovation demonstrably outperforms the KPIs, a performance-based bonus may be granted.
• In case of non-satisfactory completion of a Phase/achievement of the KPIs consider the cancellation or withholding of the payment or reclaim the payments already made, depending on the gravity of the non-achievement. Even the termination of the procurement contract may in some cases be appropriate. In any case, suppliers who deliver unsatisfactory results, will not be invited to bid for a contract for the next Phase.
• When the contract is cancelled due to the fault of the supplier, only the contractual value of the accepted deliverables must be paid.
• In all cases, payment arrangements must respect the principles of proportionality, fairness and sound financial management, while safeguarding the public interest and ensuring value for money. Make sure that the arrangements regarding payments in the contract are respected.
• Valuation of IPR (PCP): since the supplier typically retains the IPRs, the agreed price must reflect the market value of the results minus the commercial value of the rights retained by the supplier