ESCA Project Accelerator
Every step in this sequence is done somewhere by someone. What is unusual is doing them in order, with the same people, so that a decision taken at step two is not quietly contradicted at step six.
The seven steps map onto the ten lifecycle stages used across the pipeline
Market Consultation. The city is engaging the market openly to test requirements, capability and cost before drafting tender documents.
The track above shows a project at stage six, market consultation, which is step 05 of the Accelerator. Every project page on this site carries the same track, so a city can see exactly where it stands relative to comparable work elsewhere in Europe.
The process
Listing the failure modes is deliberate. Most of them are recognisable, and most of them are cheaper to avoid than to correct.
The city states the problem in its own terms. ESCA structures it into a form that policy, funding and market actors can act on.
The city arrives with a solution it has already chosen and asks for it to be justified.
Lifecycle stages 01 Challenge Identified
Scope, beneficiaries, intervention logic and success measures. What will exist at the end, and how it will be judged.
Success measures are written after the funding application, to match what was promised.
Lifecycle stages 02 Concept, 03 Feasibility
Which instrument fits, what it requires, what it excludes, and what the city has to be able to demonstrate.
The instrument is chosen because a deadline is close rather than because it fits.
Lifecycle stages 04 Funding Preparation, 05 Funding Secured
Functional requirements, interoperability, data governance and standards, written to keep the market open.
Requirements are copied from a supplier document, which quietly writes the competition out.
Lifecycle stages 05 Funding Secured
Open, recorded, documented engagement with suppliers before specifications are fixed. Equal access, no private channels.
Dialogue happens in private meetings, which taints the procedure and can invalidate it.
Lifecycle stages 06 Market Consultation
Procedure, lots, award criteria and contract model, aligned to the funding conditions and the delivery timetable.
Lots follow the departmental structure of the administration instead of the technical structure of the work.
Lifecycle stages 07 Procurement Preparation, 08 Procurement
Indicators agreed at definition are tracked to operation, so the outcome can be evidenced rather than asserted.
Monitoring is designed at handover, by which point the baseline is gone.
Lifecycle stages 09 Implementation, 10 Operational
Boundaries
Start the sequence
Cities normally enter at step 01 with a challenge rather than a project. Entering later is possible, and common, but the earlier steps then have to be reconstructed.