Abstract
Employing a suitable construction procurement system is crucial to project success. However,many clients select procurement systems in a cursory manner and some clientseven use a specific procurement system by default without deliberate choice. A systematicmethod for procurement selection would help clients to arrive at more informed decisions.The first step towards a systematic procurement selection method is to identify decisioncriteria pertinent to assessing the alternatives. This paper identifies the commonly consideredcriteria for procurement selection through a qualitative survey in Australia. The subjectivityof the identified criteria is considered and the effects on procurement selectionare examined. The results indicate that speed, complexity, flexibility, responsibility, qualitylevel, risk allocation, and price competition cannot be easily gauged by objective means,and a misperception of the degree of fulfilment of any of these criteria could affect theoutcome of procurement selection.
Highlights
The escalating requirements of clients on project time, cost, quality and risk have given rise to the development and use of alternative construction procurement systems (Fellows, 1993)
This paper aims to improve our understanding of the commonly used procurement selection criteria and the objectiveness of those criteria
The results indicate that there are nine procurement selection criteria commonly used by Australian clients: speed, time certainty, price certainty, complexity, flexibility, responsibility, quality level, risk allocation and price competition
Summary
The escalating requirements of clients on project time, cost, quality and risk have given rise to the development and use of alternative construction procurement systems (Fellows, 1993). The selection of procurement system becomes a very important task for clients, as employing an inappropriate procurement system may lead to project failure (Chua et al, 1999). Inexperienced clients often have to rely on expert advice when selecting a procurement approach and this could result in inappropriate decisions with unforeseeable consequences (NEDO, 1985). Experienced clients may suffer if they based their selection upon biased past experience and the conservative decisions of their in-house experts (Masterman, 1992)
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