The possibility of placing orders in the form of public competition is confirmed in law clarification published jointly by Russian Ministry of Economic Development and Federal Anti-Monopoly Service of Russia. Moreover, the analyses and official letters of the Federal Antimonopoly Service recommend to place the orders for construction design in a form of public competition, considering the design work more as creative activity, when initially it is impossible to establish an objective and comprehensive requirements to the quality of work. And, thus, the main advantage of electronic auction is not achieved — that is determining the winner basing on minimum price offer among the bidders who meet pre-set quality requirements. The practice of already conducted design auctions shows that the price offer of the bidder is directly proportional to the quality that he is willing to offer. Moreover, the price reduction is often unreasonable, which can result in either very low quality or work collapse. At this point, placing orders for construction designing and research works in a form of public competition has a number of advantages over the electronic auction system. They are: high-quality and timely work performance due to the establishment of the most important for customer evaluation criteria of the bidders. However, there are also drawbacks. The public competition is the most difficult and the most time-consuming procedure of public procurement methods. Notification of placing an order has to be published on the official website for at least 30 days prior to the closing date and the date of disclosing the bids. In order to prevent corruption the bidders file their applications in sealed envelopes so that the information about the bid remains confidential until the opening of the envelopes. Moreover, the procedure of opening the envelopes is public, it is held at predetermined time and location specified in tender documents, so that each bidder had the right to attend it, make sure that all the envelopes with applications were sealed before the opening, listen and evaluate the content of applications and proposals of other bidders. Then, in a period of no more than 20 days, the tender committee of the customer privately carries out the procedure of applications processing for compliance with the requirements established in accordance with the Law 94FZ, and makes decisions about admission or denial for further tender in respect of each bidder who has filed an application.