Smart cities guide for developing project proposals launched

BSI, the business standards company, has launched a new guide for developing project proposals for delivering smart city solutions. Many cities in the UK and internationally are looking at how to develop as smart cities; by opening up information and data in a city, city-leaders can help provide better services and allow citizens to make more informed decisions.

PAS 184 Smart Cities – Developing project proposals for delivering smart city solutions – is a guide outlining how a city-wide, strategic-level approach to the development of a smart city programme should be applied at the level of an individual smart city project.

The guide outlines current good practice as identified by a broad range of public, private and voluntary sector practitioners engaged in developing smart city solutions. PAS 184 uses case studies to illustrate good practice in smart city procurement and creating viable, financially robust business cases for smart city projects.

PAS 184 is relevant to projects of all sorts – including ones involving procurement and a technology component. It follows recently launched PAS 183, a guide to establishing a smart cities decision-making framework for sharing data and information services.

Designed to be particularly beneficial to city leaders – from the public, private and community sectors – the new guide is targeted at project officers and commissioners on services within local and city authorities, their senior managers and the procurement specialists who support them.  

PAS 184 was developed in conjunction with the Cities Standards Institute. The Cities Standards Institute is a collaboration between BSI and the Future Cities Catapult to create a standards-based community of good practice for cities and the companies they work with.

Dan Palmer, Head of Manufacturing at BSI, said: “PAS 184 was created to make the process for delivering smart city solutions as easy as possible. One of the biggest barriers to setting up new smart city projects is the difficulty of showing how an innovative approach can provide better value for money than the business-as-usual approach. This PAS provides common-sense guidance to help city leaders to develop project proposals in order to make smart city solutions a reality.”

The latest guide is part of a wider suit of PASs, including PAS 180, 181, 182, and 183 – guides which define the vocabulary terms for smart cities, a smart city framework, a smart city concept model, and for sharing data and information, respectively.

PAS 184 does not cover how to develop the broader vision, strategy, and operating model for a smart city that is provides the optimal context for any specific smart city project – this is dealt with in PAS 181, and relevant linkages are highlighted through this PAS. This guide also does not cover how to manage the ongoing operation of a smart city solution once it has moved out of project development and into live running as part of a business-as-usual operation of the city.

The following organizations were involved in the development of PAS 184 as members of the steering group: Aberdeen City Council; AMEY; Arup; Birmingham City Council; City of Edinburgh Council; City Standards Institute (CSI); CS Transform; Design for Social Change (D4SC); IBM; Leeds City Council; Ordnance Survey; Peterborough City Council; Slough Borough Council; SmartKlub; and Urban DNA.

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