Bidding and contracting process of government public construction : case studies from three Asean countires

Abstract

This research focused on government construction projects especially loan projects in selected three ASEAN countries: Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. The objective is to analytically describe the process of competitive bidding as practised in the three countries, to identify problems that occur in the three countries. And propose recommendations that may alleviate the problems. Based on findings from this study the bidding process in these three countries consist of number of stages such as government policy, organization, bid documents, and steps of bidding process starting from bid invitation, document preparation, pre-qualification, bid submission, bid opening, bid evaluation, as well as contract award. This research was conducted in two stages. Firstly, to retrieve information about bidding from two main sources; they were literature review and case studies. For case studies, the individuals that were interviewed included project managers, decision makers, site managers, bidding responsible officials, consultants, as well as bidders in order to find as much as possible information about bidding particularly on loan projects. The study showed that the standard bidding contract conditions that are being used in three countries are (1) government regulation and FIDIC mixed; (2) ADB/WB template; and (3) government regulation. In addition, process evaluation practices in three countries are scoring method, from which the project owners pay more attention on teachnical criteria. However, in contrast from data that used relative index analysis, project contractors are concerned about (1) estimated price criteria (2) financial statements (3) technical qualification (4) experience proposal and (5) labors and equipment proposed. The bidding process resulted in an increase in competition among bidders, thereby, providing owners with more benefits, including collusion reduction. Conclusively, international competitive bidding yields more advantage in terms of transparency, competitiveness, and high standards of work.