IFZ conducted the first GPP 2020 train-the-procurer seminar in the federal state of Tyrol on June 30, 2014. The seminar was held in Innsbruck at GemNova, a rather young Tyrolean procurement service provider that is owned by the Tyrolean municipalities association. GemNova accomplishes innovative services for Tyrolean municipalities, is interested in implementing green criteria and wants to deal with the requirements of the national Action Plan for Sustainable Public Procurement. Against the background that GPP has only hardly reached Austrian municipalities, IFZ considered a seminar with GemNova highly relevant.

The seminar involved seven participants, the complete procurement team of GemNova. It was held by Angelika Tisch and Steffen Wirth of IFZ. Seminar contents were adapted to the needs of the team of GemNova and were directed to two forthcoming tenders. The main contents of the seminar covered environmental criteria, verification issues and tools for the product groups paper, office equipment, and cleaning. Essentially two practical exercises were conducted: verification on the basis of safety data sheets and calculations of chemical oxygen demands of different paper products in order to check if the paper products meet environmental requirements. The seminar setting was quite challenging due to the different professional backgrounds of the participants. Participants anyhow evaluated the seminar as satisfying or good. IFZ and GemNova agreed on a follow-up.