Background
From pilots to scale: why facility management reform is needed
The City of Bratislava is advancing a city-wide transition towards its 2030 climate targets under the EU Mission for Climate-Neutral and Smart Cities. In October 2025, Bratislava received the EU Mission Label, confirming the credibility of its Climate City Contract (CCC), including the action and investment plans. The CCC sets targets and flagship measures across key emission sectors, with a substantial focus on municipal buildings and assets – for example, reducing energy consumption in municipal buildings by 35% and increasing renewable electricity supply for city-owned assets to cover at least 20% of annual electricity demand in municipal buildings.
In parallel, Bratislava was part of the NetZeroCities Pilot City Programme and, with its Building Power project. The project in Bratislava had two main components:
1. Establishing an Energy Management Team (EMT) and building internal capacities and systems for energy management (EM) of municipal building stock; and
2. Cooperating with businesses in the city to reduce CO₂ emissions and accelerate practical solutions in the built environment.
Under Component 2, Bratislava launched a city–private sector partnership through the Bratislava Mayor’s Climate Challenge (pilot year 2025 and second year 2026), engaging 16 companies in measurable actions to reduce emissions.
Under Component 1 (which forms the basis for this request for support), the City established an Energy Management Team consisting of two energy managers, tasked with developing and piloting a functional mechanism for more effective operation of city-owned buildings. In 2025, the EMT delivered a first set of tangible achievements and pilots demonstrating both savings potential and the need for scale-up:
- Smart energy management (automatic metering) was deployed in 10 buildings, enabling automated readings for electricity, gas, heat and temperature.
- Automated data collection was launched to machine-collect and process energy invoices, enabling consumption tracking and replacing manual reporting.
- Pilot optimisation measures (3 pilot measures in 2025 and more planned for 2026) were implemented, e.g., room-level heating control in a senior home, with expected 20 – 30% gas savings (approx. 50 MWh; up to EUR 5k) and payback within 8 years.
- An internal energy savings campaign for employees at City Hall was prepared to support behavioural and low-cost operational savings.
A key learning from the EMT work is that energy management can only deliver at scale if embedded in a broader facility management model. Without influence over core building operational activities (e.g., boiler rooms, HVAC settings, maintenance practices), energy optimisation remains limited to isolated pilots rather than a portfolio-wide improvement.
Scale of the problem
The City and its organisations directly operate approximately 400 buildings. Of these, approximately 200 buildings are managed by eight facility-management units within the City administration and fall within the scope of this assignment. These units also manage at least 500 additional assets, such as garages and flats.
Under this setup, most building managers cover the full scope of building management activities without specialisation; information and costs (especially operation and maintenance) are fragmented, which limits consolidated planning and prioritisation, standardised procurement and operation, and economies of scale.
The City and its organisations spend approximately EUR 6 million per year on electricity, natural gas and district heating across the wider municipal portfolio. Buildings and other assets (excluding public lighting) consume approximately 13 GWh of electricity, 16 GWh of natural gas, and 14 GWh of heat from district heating annually. However, energy costs represent only part of total cost of ownership. Other major expenditures, particularly operation and maintenance (O&M), cannot currently be consolidated or reliably quantified at portfolio level due to inconsistent categorisation and decentralised record-keeping.
Under the current setup:
1. Managers are responsible for the full scope of building management activities without specialisation; in many cases, facility-related tasks are pooled with non-technical roles;
2. Maintenance is often reactive focusing mainly on legal obligations, such as mandatory inspections, or on emergency repairs;
3. Capital investment is insufficient to address lifecycle needs, leading to a growing backlog of deferred maintenance and renewal works or increased OPEX spent on quick fixes;
4. Distribution of information across multiple managers prevents effective planning and prioritisation due to a lack of consolidated data and standardisation.
The only major exception to this decentralised structure is the procurement of energy commodities (electricity and natural gas), which is organised centrally for all organisations and city-owned companies. This demonstrates that centralisation is feasible and already delivers value in one area; however, the largest untapped potential lies in standardising and coordinating facility management activities (O&M, service procurement, planning and data) across the portfolio. Without this, the city cannot achieve expected climate targets and scale the EMT’s improvements beyond pilots, while the condition of the building stock will continue to deteriorate.
As an overall goal, the City of Bratislava aims to transform how it manages, maintains and develops its municipal building portfolio by moving from a fragmented, decentralised approach to a coordinated and effective facility management operating model.
This assignment focuses on the facility-management units of the City administration – list included in Annex 3. City organisations and municipal companies are outside its scope. To support this long-term strategic goal, the City needs expert advisory services to:
(i) analyse the current governance, legal (ownership and contractual) framework, processes, costs, data and capacities related to the management of the municipal building and facility portfolio.
(ii) prepare a proposal for facility/building stock management, including:
- clear scope, roles/responsibilities, and governance,
- process and data standardisation requirements,
- resourcing and skills plan,
- financial implications and expected benefits estimation
(iii) a detailed implementation roadmap for one selected model.
1. The assignment is expected to contribute to the following longer-term objectives of the City by contributing the underlying analysis: A robust data foundation enabling informed, high-quality decision-making, with the greatest benefits realised through subsequent improvements in both capital investment and operational performance;
2. Economies of scale achieved through consolidated management and coordinated actions
3. Staff specialisation with clearly defined expert roles and targeted training;
4. A centralised planning process that enables all buildings in the in-scope portfolio to be assessed and prioritised holistically, reducing the risk of emergency interventions and enabling more strategic, budget-aligned investment planning; and
5. Integration and cooperation between facility management and energy management, leading to more efficient and cost-effective asset operation and delivering long-term financial and performance benefits.
Key stakeholders
1. Project Leads: The Energy Management Team (EMT) and the Climate Office.
2. Steering Committee: Deputy City Directors and the City’s Chief Strategy Officer (Steering Committee).
Primary stakeholders
3. Relevant department and unit directors, mainly:
- the Property Management Department (Sekcia spravy nehnutelnosti or “SSN”),
- the Rental Housing Department (Sekcia najomneho byvania or “SNB”), and
- the Internal Management Unit (Oddelenie vnutornej spravy or “OVS”)
4. Other facility managers specified in Annex 3
Secondary stakeholders
5. Construction Department (delivers investment), Finance Department and Public Procurement Department.
6. The assessment will not cover the Municipal police department, which is part of the city administration and manage own portfolio of buildings. City organizations and city companies are out of scope of this assignment.
Objectives
The objective of this assignment is to enable the City of Bratislava to make an informed decision on how to organise facility management across the eight in-scope units of the City administration. The contractor will assess current responsibilities, processes, costs, staff capacity and legal constraints; develop and compare at least three feasible operating models and their financial implications; recommend an option for city decision. The City will decide whether and how to implement that model, the contractor then prepares a detailed implementation plan for the model selected by the City.
The assignment is intended to support the City’s longer-term objectives for its buildings and assets, and the relevant targets in its Climate City Contract and Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plan (SECAP). Achieving these objectives will depend on subsequent City decisions, funding and implementation; they are not contractual outcomes for which the contractor is responsible under this assignment:
1. establishing multi-year maintenance and renewal planning aligned with the City’s budget cycle;
2. reducing avoidable energy and maintenance costs through better building operation and preventive planning;
3. developing a consolidated asset and cost register for the in-scope portfolio;
4. increasing renewable electricity supply for municipal buildings; and
5. making progress towards the City’s building-related climate targets.
Scope
Climate KIC, acting on behalf of NetZeroCities is requesting proposal for expert advisory services to assess the City of Bratislava’s current facility management arrangements, compare options for a future operating model and prepare an implementation plan for the selected model. The contractor’s assignment comprises Phases 1–3 and builds on completed City-led preparatory work described as Phase 0 below.
- Phase 0 – City-led Preparation and Process Mapping
- Phase 1 – Baseline Assessment and Diagnostic
- Phase 2 – Target Operating Model Options and Decision Package
- Phase 3 – Implementation Plan for the Selected Model
Timeline and additional information
Interested parties are invited to submit their proposals by 25 November 2026 (23:59 CEST Time) to [bids@netzerocities.eu]. Proposals should include and address all specific requirements related to the request which can be found below.
