In order to give a direct assignment to a suitable vendor, you need to determine clear and transparent criteria to be able to judge the vendor's bid.

The cities' own perspectives and networks are most likely of great influence when a direct assignment is considered. Looking for vendors outside your own network and borders is often overlooked but can result in the best fit.

A direct assignment is a relatively quick way to realise a mobility hub because, unlike with an innovative partnership, there is no need for a long process to determine the contents of the assignment in cooperation with vendors.

This is a check question. Due to the nature of public tendering, there are laws to uphold in case the sum of the assignment is too high. A direct assignment is not in compliance with public tendering rules if for instance the expected contract value is above the threshold of a European tender (example: the threshold for services is € 215,000 excluding VAT for non-central governments)

The possibility of an open procedure instead of a direct assignment might give you more options if you lack a full overview of the possible vendors on the market.

You need clear criteria to differentiate among vendors and decide who fits the assignment the best out of all the submissions.

An open procedure requires enough capacity to facilitate all the necessary legal steps.

Time is an important factor. An open procedure requires going through legal processes and steps which, in the case of a small to medium-sized hub, will result in a minimum lead time of three to four months and, in the case of a larger hub, as much as a year.

An open procedure should result in options to choose from. However, at the same time, an open procedure should also give space to vendors to come up with their own vision for the product they need to deliver.

The restricted procedure should be used for procurement exercises where market analysis has shown that many bidders could meet your needs. If there is an abundance of potential bidders, a pre-selection of vendors would reduce the number of possible vendors that thereafter actually start the tender procedure.

Objective reasons for the restrictions can include too many potential bidding parties making the process unmanageable, the need to improve the quality of the bids and the decision for only a limited number of vendors to participate and spend their means on the tendering process.

Selection criteria assess the qualities and capacities of the bidder, not the bid. The award criteria assess the bid itself. So project-specific selection criteria can help with the preselection of vendors.

This presumes clearly predefined requirements which can be evaluated in detail. If these requirements are not available beforehand, it may be assumed that input from the market is necessary in order to decide what is wanted and needed. The restricted procedure is then not the best fit. This procedure should only be chosen if it is clear what is wanted and needed. If this is not yet the case, an innovative partnership may be a better choice.

Restricted procedure is time-consuming since it consists of two phases: the pre-selection phase and the tender itself.

Innovation partnerships carry inherent risk because the product, solution or service which will be the result of the partnership is not guaranteed to be a fit to the problem.

Business cases are an important prerequisite for innovation partnerships since the initial costs of the innovation need an optimistic perspective for a business case result.

Innovation partnerships work towards developing as-yet-undiscovered solutions. If there already is a fitting solution to the problem which is central to the procurement, you will want to opt for a direct assignment or a restricted procedure.

Innovation partnerships require process management and people management, as well as in-field expertise.

The process of an innovation partnership is relatively complex. Having previous experience with this type of procurement is valuable for the realization of mobility hubs.

Competitive procedure can be a significant time investment. In case of limited time, the competitive procedure is usually not a good fit.

This procedure allows you to clarify bids with bidders after their submission of fully-formed initial tenders.

You should use this procedure if you are unable to define how to meet your needs technically, and/or you cannot specify the legal or financial requirements of your contract and you need the expertise of vendors to help determine those requirements.

When you are unable to define criteria prior to the procurement, the competitive procedure is a good option. The competitive procedure is a process itself which helps to define the actual problem and solution.

The competitive procedure is a co-creation between vendor and city. The outcome is uncertain, and vendors need to take a risk by allocating their time while not having a guarantee that the process will lead to an assignment for them.