Building Procurement Research Articles

Analysis of Criteria Influencing Contractor Selection Using TOPSIS Method

Selection of the most suitable contractor is an important process in public construction projects. This process is a major decision which may influence the progress and success of a construction project. Improper selection of contractors may lead to problems such as bad quality of work and delay in project duration. Especially in the construction projects of public buildings, the proper choice of contractor is beneficial to the public institution. Public procurement processes have different characteristics in respect to dissimilarities in political, social and economic features of every country. In Turkey, Turkish Public Procurement Law PPL 4734 is the main regulatory law for the procurement of the public buildings. According to the PPL 4734, public construction administrators have to contract with the lowest bidder who has the minimum requirements according to the criteria in prequalification process. Public administrators are not sufficient for selection of the proper contractor because of the restrictive provisions of the PPL 4734. The lowest bid method does not enable public construction administrators to select the most qualified contractor and they have realised the fact that the selection of a contractor based on lowest bid alone is inadequate and may lead to the failure of the project in terms of time delay Eand poor quality standards. In order to evaluate the overall efficiency of a project, it is necessary to identify selection criteria. This study aims to focus on identify importance of other criteria besides lowest bid criterion in contractor selection process of PPL 4734. In this study, a survey was conducted to staff of Department of Construction Works of Eskisehir Osmangazi University. According to TOPSIS (Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to the Ideal Solution) for analysis results, termination of construction work in previous tenders is the most important criterion of 12 determined criteria. The lowest bid criterion is ranked in rank 5.

Building professionals’ views on energy efficiency compliance requirements

In Sweden, the national building code (BBR) stipulates the specific energy use as an indicator to verify whether a new building is complying with its design-phase energy performance values. However, previous studies have shown that there may be large differences between the calculated specific energy and the actual monitored energy use. The differences are attributed to various reasons including the actual energy behaviour of the occupants as compared to the standard values used in the simulations. This may lead to disputes between the client and the contractor on the responsibility of meeting the energy requirements.In this study an adapted version of Delphi methodology was used to understand the building professionals’ view on various indicators used to verify building energy performance. The study showed that professionals are concerned with the use of specific energy as an indicator in the building procurement process as they do not have control over the occupants’ energy behaviour. Majority of the professionals expressed a large confidence in the average U-value of the building, component U-values and the specific heat loss figure by the Swedish center for zero-energy buildings as indicators of building energy performance.

INSERTING A HUMAN RIGHTS APPROACH INTO PENAL SYSTEM AND CORRUPTION JUDICIAL DECISION IN INDONESIA

INTRODUCTION:In the last decade, it has become almost universally accepted that the development is based on and framed by core human rights, as international norms that protect all people from severe political, legal, and social abuses. Corruption is a central issue of human rights and vice versa. Corruption, even in its most minimal understanding as the waste of public recources, is both a primer source and facilitator of obstacles to development, which constitutes a human right in itself. Corruption is also a cause and facilitator of specific human rights abuses, undermining such core rights as equality before the law and nondiscrimination. Although this fact is not operationalized, it is recognized by Transparency International, as is expressed in the Seoul findings: 'we condemn corruption as immoral, unjust and repugnant to the ideals of humanity enshrined in the Unversal Declaration of Human Righss and we confirm our conviction that all human beings have a basic human right to live in a corruption-free society (Lucy Koechlin, 2007).Considering that corruption relates closely to human rights violation, the preamble of United Nation Convention Against Corruption (UNCAC), 2003 starts by referring to the concern about the 'seriousness of the problems and threats posed by corruption to the stability and security of societies, undermining the institutions and values of democracy, ethical values and justice and jeopardizing sustainable development and the rule of law'. Conceptually, democracy is not identhical to human rights, but this principle has long had a close association with the ideas of human rights (Matthew Lister, 2012). Respecting and protecting human rights is one of the core elements in suppressing and eradicating corruption. The idea of substainable development shifts from an idea of sustainability as primarily ecological, to a framework that also emphasizes the economic and social context of development. The preamble then couples sustainable development with the rule of law. Therefore, it can be argued that the convention begins by recognizing the economic and social rights as well as the civil and political rights of people that the human rights based approaches seek to promote and protect (United Nations Development Programme, 2004).Under Indonesian context, The Indonesian (Anti Corruption Law number 20 of 2001) perceives corruption not only related to state financial loss, but also as a violation of economic and social rights, as stated clearly in the consideration that 'the widespread cases have not only inflicted losses on the state but also violated the social and economic rights of the general public so that corruption needs to be categorized as a crime that must be eradicated in an extraordinary way'. In this sense, a human rights based approach in eradication corruption is one of the extraordinary ways. This approach is taken into account in suppressing corruption in Indonesia because traditional ways appears unsuccesfull to minimize the rate of corruption cases committed by state officials. In some corruption cases showing to public, there is also a fact that corruption has a close connection to human rights violation.In the case of former general secretary of ministry of sport, Wafid Muharram, it is proved that the accused received bribery of 3,2 billion IDR from marketing manajer of Duta Graha Indah Ltd, Mohammad El Idris and manajing director of Anak Negeri Ltd, Mindo Rosalina Manulang. This money was given as a reward for directing Duta Graha Indah as a winner of public procurement of Asean Games athlete building in Palembang. By this bribery the apportunity of parties to obtain the same right for public service does not appear. It is also proved that former governor of Banten, Ratu Atut Chosiyah was legally quilty of corruption in the procurement of medical equipment of Banten province. In this case there is a close connection between corrupt practice of the accused and violation of the right of healthy. …

The Current Practice of Design and Build Procurement Process in Malaysia

This paper discusses the design-build project delivery method which is becoming an increasingly viable alternative to traditional project delivery method in the public sector. This interest has led to dialogue among public sector agencies to establish and formalise understanding of the design-build process and its implementation. The process consists of six stages namely Project Definition, Request for Qualification, Request for Proposal, Proposal Submission and Evaluation, Contract Award, and Document/Construction. Therefore, this finding of Design-Build (DB) procurement process is on the improvement and understanding on an owner and contractor in practice and implementation in Malaysia. 
 Keywords: design/build, design/bid/build, advantage and disadvantage, procurement process

Penilaian Kondisi Bangunan Gedung Sekolah Dasar Negeri Studi Kasus di Sekolah Dasar Negeri Se-Kabupaten Madiun

Facilities and infrastructure are important elements to achieve the successful education and teaching process. The procurement of adequate and standardized buildings become an effort to comply with the minimum standards of infrastructure required by the government. This study focus on conducting an analyzis the damage level at State Primary School (SDN) buildings in Madiun regency.Building condition assessment conducted through a direct surveys and then proceed by weighting the data to obtain the level of damage categorized as good, minor, moderate and heavily damaged . Among the 431 of state primary school buildings surveyed, 36.53% of the classrooms in a minor damage while 25.42% others considered heavily damaged. For the teacher's office, 38.04% were in a minor damage, while 23.23% others considered heavily damaged. For the library buildings, 38.14% of them considered in a minor damage and 24.53% others heavily damaged. For teacher latrines condition, 49.53% of teacher latrines considered heavily damaged, while 24.03% were moderate damage. While 49.82% of student latrines were heavily damaged and 23.49% others considered in a moderate damage.From the assessment, it can be concluded that the latrines facility repairment, both for teachers and students, should become top priority for the local government in the implementation of school quality improvement programs.buildings condition, level of damage, primary school building

Penilaian Kondisi Bangunan Gedung Sekolah Dasar Negeri Studi Kasus di Sekolah Dasar Negeri Se-Kabupaten Madiun

Facilities and infrastructure are important elements to achieve the successful education and teaching process. The procurement of adequate and standardized buildings become an effort to comply with the minimum standards of infrastructure required by the government. This study focus on conducting an analyzis the damage level at State Primary School (SDN) buildings in Madiun regency.Building condition assessment conducted through a direct surveys and then proceed by weighting the data to obtain the level of damage categorized as good, minor, moderate and heavily damaged . Among the 431 of state primary school buildings surveyed, 36.53% of the classrooms in a minor damage while 25.42% others considered heavily damaged. For the teacher's office, 38.04% were in a minor damage, while 23.23% others considered heavily damaged. For the library buildings, 38.14% of them considered in a minor damage and 24.53% others heavily damaged. For teacher latrines condition, 49.53% of teacher latrines considered heavily damaged, while 24.03% were moderate damage. While 49.82% of student latrines were heavily damaged and 23.49% others considered in a moderate damage.From the assessment, it can be concluded that the latrines facility repairment, both for teachers and students, should become top priority for the local government in the implementation of school quality improvement programs.buildings condition, level of damage, primary school building

Understanding pre-qualification preferences of public clients in traditional and design-build procurement systems

The present study investigated the pre-qualification (PQ) process followed by various public clients in India to find their preferences regarding the pre-qualification criterions and also to ascertain if 'single step' procurement or a 'two-step' procurement process was favoured by clients. The approach used in this study was content analysis of 111 numbers of request for qualification (RFQ)/request for proposal (RFP)/notice inviting tenders (NITs) issued by public clients. Total eight 'pre-qualification categories' were identified along with 14 'PQ criterions' for traditional procurement and 13 'PQ criterions' for design build (DB) procurement. The study concluded that 'experience in executing similar projects', 'performance of executed projects' and 'financial capability of bidder' were the most preferred PQ categories and it was also found that single step procurement was preferred by public clients compared to two-step procurement for all types of construction projects. The findings of this study are expected to make contribution to the existing body of knowledge due to their relevance to academic fraternity as well as to those stakeholders of construction industry who wish to gain better understanding of PQ process in Indian public project procurement.

Why do the design stage elemental cost plan and final tender sum differ in New Zealand?

Purpose– The aim of this study is to investigate the reasons for disparity between design stage elemental cost plan and final tender sum (contract sum) in building procurement. A number of risk factors responsible for such variation were identified through case study projects from which data were extracted.Design/methodology/approach– Literature review determined the risk factors inherent in the preparation of design stage elemental cost plan. Interviews and thematic analysis identified the risk factors responsible for the disparity between design stage elemental cost plans and final tender sums. Analysis of documents obtained from the archives of study participants (consultant quantity surveyors) complemented responses from the interviews.Findings– The review revealed a number of inherent risks in the design stage elemental cost plan development. The interviews further indicated that risks have an impact on and are responsible for the deviations experienced. The assessment of these risk elements could assist in determining the final tender sum from cost plans.Research limitations/implications– Findings revealed disparity between elemental cost plans and final tender sums in the region of −14 and +16 per cent. The risk factors identified were responsible for the deviations observed. With this information, Quantity Surveyors are more able to accurately forecast final tender sums of building projects from cost plans through proper risk identification and analysis, thus increasing the accuracy of design stage elemental costing.Originality/value– To the best of the knowledge of the researchers, there is no recent documentary evidence of an investigation into the reasons for disparity between design stage elemental cost plan and final tender sum in traditional building procurement in New Zealand construction.

Assessing the impacts of preferential procurement on low-carbon building

The significance of global warming is shaping building procurement, with much of the effort aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions through a preferential bidding mechanism. However, only a limited number of studies have quantitatively estimated the potential impact of bid preference on the emission reduction from building construction. The aim of this paper is to improve our understanding of how bid discounts change owners' procurement costs and the magnitudes of emission mitigation. A two-stage optimization model is designed to help the owner determine the discount rate that would automatically control the emission of the awarded contract within a desired level. The goal is for bidders to regard emission reduction efforts as an investment, with returns coming in the form of an increased chance of winning the bid. Our results imply that for the building retrofit project studied herein, a discount rate of 0.6 is suggested for every percentage of emission reduction. This discount level reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 28.2% while raising procurement costs by 3.7% relative to a non-preference mechanism. The increased procurement costs can be partially compensated under existing cap-and-trade scheme. The results show that the choice of discount significantly alters bidders' efforts on emission mitigation, and emission control cost can be minimized with the proposed optimization algorithm.

What is best value in public sector building construction?

Although the lowest bid procurement philosophy has formed the basis of procurement in public sector building construction, for a long time it has arguably resulted in low-quality construction work. In response, construction stakeholders have sought to explore alternative procurement philosophies. One such philosophy is ‘best value’. In this study undertaken in Korea, the authors explore what is best value in public sector building construction. The literature is used to extract best value criteria that are then ranked by a selection of managers involved in procurement of public buildings. Best value was found to be categorised against six main criteria whose relative weightings vary with building type and, by implication, building functionality.

Life cycle assessment as a decision support tool for bridge procurement: environmental impact comparison among five bridge designs

The conventional decision-making for bridges is mostly focusing on technical, economical, and safety perspectives. Nowadays, the society devotes an ever-increased effort to the construction sector regarding their environmental performance. However, considering the complexity of the environmental problems and the diverse character of bridges, the related research for bridge as a whole system is very rare. Most existing studies were only conducted for a single indicator, part of the structure components, or a specific life stage. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an internationally standardized method for quantifying the environmental impact of a product, asset, or service throughout its whole life cycle. However, in the construction sector, LCA is usually applied in the procurement of buildings, but not bridges as yet. This paper presents a comprehensive LCA framework for road bridges, complied with LCA ReCiPe (H) methodology. The framework enables identification of the key structural components and life cycle stages of bridges, followed by aggregation of the environmental impacts into monetary values. The utility of the framework is illustrated by a practical case study comparing five designs for the Karlsnas Bridge in Sweden, which is currently under construction. This paper comprehensively analyzed 20 types of environmental indicators among five proposed bridge designs, which remedies the absence of full spectrum of environmental indicators in the current state of the art. The results show that the monetary weighting system and uncertainties in key variables such as the steel recycling rate and cement content may highly affect the LCA outcome. The materials, structural elements, and overall designs also have varying influences in different impact categories. The result can be largely affected by the system boundaries, surrounding environment, input uncertainties, considered impact indicators, and the weighting systems applied; thus, no general conclusions can be drawn without specifying such issues. Robustly evaluating and ranking the environmental impact of various bridge designs is far from straightforward. This paper is an important attempt to evaluate various designs from full dimensions. The results show that the indicators and weighting systems must be clearly specified to be applicable in a transparent procurement. This paper provides vital knowledge guiding the decision maker to select the most LCA-feasible proposal and mitigate the environmental burden in the early stage.

Procurement of Functional Rural Primary School Buildings through the Application of Appropriate Technology for Building Materials and Construction

Most rural primary schools in Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, Nigeria do not have buildings that are conducive for learning because the materials used for their construction are of organic origin such as thatch, mud, timber etc. This made them biodegradable and decay quickly. More frequent replacement of such materials were required because of their low durability. The functionality of such schools in terms of conducive teaching and learning environment was not assured. Appropriate technology for building materials and construction techniques was recommended as remedy. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n1p421

Mapping Construction Industry Roles to the Disaster Management Cycle

The construction industry is central to the promotion of disaster resilience through building procurement, design, construction, etc. It plays a key role in responding to disasters - dealing with collapsed and damaged buildings and infrastructure and providing temporary shelter and services to affected communities - and also in post-disaster reconstruction efforts.This research identifies the disaster resilience roles of construction professionals on the basis of the literature and maps these to the disaster management cycle in order to draw on the emerging framework to determine potential construction industry education and research opportunities associated with the pursuit of societal disaster resilience.

Procurement of Functional Rural Primary School Buildings through the Application of Appropriate Technology for Building Materials and Construction

Most rural primary schools in Ekeremor Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, Nigeria do not have buildings that are conducive for learning because the materials used for their construction are of organic origin such as thatch, mud, timber etc. This made them biodegradable and decay quickly. More frequent replacement of such materials were required because of their low durability. The functionality of such schools in terms of conducive teaching and learning environment was not assured. Appropriate technology for building materials and construction techniques was recommended as remedy. DOI: 10.5901/ajis.2014.v3n1p421

A new call for quality. Shifting the paradigm for development policy in Greece through competitions

This paper is following up on Kouzelis, Psilopoulou and Psilopoulos (2010), where it was partly suggested that skipping architectural competitions in favour of a quantitative (i.e., fiscal) approach was a prevailing paradigm for the building procurement policy in Greece at the time. Here the aim is to trace a notable shift from that paradigm by reviewing three case studies: the case of the UpTo35 competition conducted as part of a private development scheme, the case of two ideas competitions organized by architecture review GreekArchitects.gr as part of an open discourse on politics and urban issues, and finally a general turn in policy by the ‘Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change including a new legislative framework aiming to establish a central role for architectural competitions in the development of public space. As these cases are studied in terms of narrative inquiry, the focus will be primarily on the incentives behind them and a proposal that they all find themselves on common ground by the narrative of simply ‘breaking with past practices’, in addition to introducing the notion of quality, not by prescribing it in qualificatory terms but rather by simply supporting and safeguarding it in both policy and will.

Transdisciplinary Charrettes: A Research Method for Sustainable Design

As the largest consumer of resources globally, the construction industry faces significant challenges due to future changes in resource availability. How might this complex industry achieve reduction of resource consumption and waste given the disconnections existing between stakeholders in the building procurement process and the persistence of discipline based knowledge? This question is among many being addressed by a current Australian Research Council funded research project entitled ‘Reconsidering Sustainable Building and Design: A Cultural Change Approach.’ The project involves ten partners from government and industry, and academic partners in China and Germany. A feature of the project is the introduction of transdisciplinary charrettes to transcend disciplinary knowledge boundaries and promote innovation. Design charrettes have a long history in the architecture profession and are effectively employed in transdisciplinary planning and building projects worldwide. The project intends to employ a charrette based method for data collection and analysis. Scant literature exists in relation to such a research method. Hence, a literature review has been undertaken to differentiate the charrettes models currently employed in design and consultation; observing attributes of each relevant the research process. This paper discusses the outcomes of the review and outlines how this information will be employed in the project to achieve effective reduction of waste in the construction industry. The resultant ‘Charrette Methodology Matrix’ is also applicable to other projects and industries which may seek to engage a charrette based research method.

Framework for Enhancing Cost Management of Building Services

Cost is generally accepted as an essential ingredient of good design. However, the co-ordination and integration of building services constitute a major problem in the procurement and cost management of buildings coupled with gaps in knowledge by practitioners in the technology of building services.The study proposed a generic framework for integrating quantity surveyors services in the procurement and effective cost management of building services in Malaysia construction industry. The framework requires early involvement of design consultants including specialist designers and quantity surveyors. The most significant obstacle to the adoption of the framework is the industry commitment and the client's readiness to pay for additional services.

Design and Build Procurement System – Contractor Selection

AbstractOne of the contract awarding systems in public sector in Poland is the Design & Build system. In this system, a client concludes a contract agreement with only one company, a contractor, in order to carry out both design and construction of works. While deciding on this form of delivery of a public project, the client is obliged to conduct a single proceeding aiming to select the contractor. In this paper, public works contracts awarded in the D&B system in Poland are analysed, whilst attention was put on the contracting modes and assessment criteria. The results are assessed against the experience of other countries and recommended methods for selection of the Design and Build contractor.

Why is Design-Build Commonly Used in the Public Sector? An Illustration from Hong Kong

The Design and Build (D&B) procurement method is one of the systems advocated to overcome inadequacies with the traditional procurement method. In recent years, this innovative procurement method has been put to practice in Hong Kong where a vast amount of infrastructure works is taking place. This paper aims to illustrate the applicability of design-build in the Hong Kong setting.As most D&B projects are undertaken by the public sector of Hong Kong, the main features of a public sector project and reasons for its wider use on D&B are fully examined in the paper. To further explore the benefits of D&B in actual practice, structured interviews have been conducted with clients, contractors and consultants running D&B projects in Hong Kong. Summary of major problems of running D&B projects from the previous study by the authors is also outlined. With the increasing use of D&B in the public sector of Hong Kong and worldwide, more research can be undertaken on the quantitative comparison of the traditional mode of procurement and how to carry out a D&B project successfully so as to develop a knowledge base for the D&B procurement method.

Perceptions of Time, Cost and Quality Management on Building Projects

This paper examines the relative intrinsic importance of the effective management of projecttime, cost and quality in the attainment of client objectives. The findings from a questionnairesurvey are presented. The survey explored the perceptions of South Africanclients concerning their objectives and the project time, cost and quality management associatedwith building procurement systems in South Africa. The findings indicate thatmis-perceptions exist between clients, contractors and building professionals regardingthe time, cost and quality management associated with building projects, and the contributionthis makes to the attainment of client objectives.