Nature of Tender Review Meetings

AbstractTender review meetings form a significant part of a contractor’s tendering process. These are instances in a tender process when the members of a bid team come together to coordinate their tender preparation activities, develop their tender strategy, and quality check the output to date of a tender process. Little empirical work exists on this, particularly because of the commercially sensitive data associated with it. Here, access was negotiated into the offices of two major UK contractors, hereafter known as Gamma and Delta, and the whole tender process was shadowed for 6 and 7 weeks, respectively, using participant observation, documentary analysis, and interview. This helped to examine and analyze the various review meetings that take place in the tendering process, and how they connect with the development of a contractor’s tender strategy, program, and price. Out of seven tender review meetings identified, four main ones significantly impacted the final submission. These were tender launch, ...

[1]  Samuel Laryea,et al.  Quality of tender documents: case studies from the UK , 2011 .

[2]  S. Laryea,et al.  How contractors price risk in bids: theory and practice , 2008 .

[3]  Ali A. Shash.  BIDDING PRACTICES OF SUBCONTRACTORS IN COLORADO , 1998 .

[4]  Derek S. Drew,et al.  A comparison of contractors’ decision to bid behaviour according to different market environments , 2008 .

[5]  Wen-Lin Tzeng,et al.  A study on the effectiveness of the most advantageous tendering method in the public works of Taiwan , 2006 .

[6]  Robert L. K. Tiong,et al.  Final Negotiation in Competitive BOT Tender , 1997 .

[7]  Will Hughes,et al.  Risk and Price in the Bidding Process of Contractors , 2011 .

[8]  Franco Caron,et al.  Multi-criteria assessment of the probability of winning in the competitive bidding process , 2001 .

[9]  G. Runeson,et al.  Pre-tender and post-tender negotiations in Australia , 1984 .

[10]  Gary David Holt,et al.  A conceptual alternative to current tendering practice , 1993 .

[11]  Wm Chan,et al.  Empirical study of tendering practice of Dutch municipalities for the procurement of civil-engineering contracts , 1995 .

[12]  Martin Skitmore,et al.  Critical stressors influencing construction estimators in Hong Kong , 2005 .

[13]  Will Hughes,et al.  Commercial reviews in the tender process of contractors , 2009 .

[14]  Stuart D. Green,et al.  Tendering: optimization and rationality , 1989 .

[15]  M. Gates.  Bidding Strategies and Probabilities , 1967 .

[16]  H. Shepard,et al.  Men Who Manage , 1959 .

[17]  Samuel Laryea.  Subcontract and supply enquiries in the tender process of contractors , 2009 .

[18]  Mustafa Tuncan,et al.  E-bidding proposal preparation system for construction projects , 2006 .

[19]  Weiguo Song,et al.  COMPETITIVE TENDERING PRACTICE IN CHINESE CONSTRUCTION , 1998 .

[20]  Henry Mintzberg.  The Nature of Managerial Work , 1974, Operational Research Quarterly (1970-1977).

[21]  Nabil Kartam,et al.  Design--build pre-qualification and tendering approach for public projects , 2005 .

[22]  Martin Betts.  Methods and data used by large building contractors in preparing tenders , 1990 .

[23]  Daniel King,et al.  Risk and Need-for-Work Premiums in Contractor Bidding , 1991 .

[24]  Gary R. Smith,et al.  Small to Medium Contractor Contingency and Assumption of Risk , 1999 .

[25]  Cathy Berry.  The sustainable procurement guide: Procuring sustainably using BS 8903 , 2011 .

[26]  Ching-Torng Lin,et al.  Bid/no-bid decision-making – a fuzzy linguistic approach , 2004 .

[27]  Martin Skitmore,et al.  Ethics in Tendering: A Survey of Australian Opinion and Practice , 1999 .

[28]  J. Gill,et al.  Research Methods For Managers , 1991 .

[29]  Jin Wang,et al.  Research on project selection system of pre-evaluation of engineering design project bidding , 2009 .

[30]  Olle Wåhlström.  Simplified tender documents, giving an unambiguous representation of the finished building , 1991 .

[31]  A. H. Boussabaine,et al.  Critical determinants of construction tendering costs: Quantity surveyors’ standpoint , 2005 .

[32]  Martin Skitmore,et al.  Tendering theory revisited , 1999 .

[33]  M. Skitmore,et al.  Subjective and objective stress in construction cost estimation , 2007 .

[34]  Abdulrezak N. Mohamed,et al.  A framework for contractors to reach strategically correct bid/no bid and mark-up size decisions , 2007 .

[35]  J. Rooke,et al.  Planning for claims: an ethnography of industry culture , 2004 .

[36]  Min Liu,et al.  Modeling a Contractor’s Markup Estimation , 2005 .

[37]  K. Mohamed,et al.  Contractor’s decision for bid profit reduction within opportunistic bidding behavior of claims recovery , 2011 .

[38]  John Kelsey,et al.  What do construction project planners do , 2005 .

[39]  Paul G. Carr,et al.  Investigation of Bid Price Competition Measured through Prebid Project Estimates, Actual Bid Prices, and Number of Bidders , 2005 .

[40]  Edwin H.W. Chan,et al.  Factors Influencing Building Contractors’ Pricing for Time-Related Risks in Tenders , 2009 .

[41]  Mª Carmen González-Cruz,et al.  Mathematical relationships between scoring parameters in capped tendering , 2012 .

[42]  Julia A. Bennell,et al.  Incorporating uncertainty in competitive bidding , 2000 .

[43]  Martin Skitmore,et al.  Estimating processes of smaller builders , 1994 .