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Awarding contracts based solely on the lowest price is unsuitable for every project. Consequently, most procurement systems in developed countries have progressed to the multicriteria selection practices (MSPs) for tender evaluation. MSPs consider a range of quality measures, such as completion time, life cycle cost, functional characteristics, environmental impact and innovation, alongside bid price. This study examines the prevailing MSPs in Sri Lankan public tender evaluations to enhance the effectiveness of the local tender evaluation process.

A desk study approach was employed to collect bidding documents, resulting in the identification of 66 documents. A systematic screening process was then applied to identify those bidding documents that incorporated MSPs. Subsequently, content analysis was conducted to determine the common features of the functions used in MSPs.

The study identified six primary functions related to MSPs incorporated in the bidding documents to procure building and substation projects. Three functions follow the price-to-quality method, while the remaining three follow the quality-to-price method. Among these identified functions, four functions employ objective evaluation criteria, such as thickness, capacity and operational loss. The other two functions utilize subjective evaluation criteria, such as the project’s design and technical specifications. Contract awarding will be based on either the highest score or the lowest bid, depending on the function type.

This study’s originality lies in exploring MSPs in the Sri Lankan public tender evaluation process and in disclosing their characteristics to promote the MSPs in Sri Lanka and developing countries.

Like a well-designed procurement strategy, a well-designed rolling stock strategy promotes the development of a railroad company and contributes to its competitive advantage. Effective implementation of the rolling stock strategy enhances the likelihood of enjoying the benefits of the strategy’s design. A successful implementation relies on the strategy being known, understood, controlled and communicated to the entire organization.

The research consists of an extensive literature review as well as a series of workshops with rolling stock suppliers, railway authorities and representatives and rail users.

This paper presents a collection of solutions for passenger rail rolling stock procurement. The authors offer guidance to the strategic procurement of rolling stock in the European Union (EU) and propose key performance indicators to measure the effectiveness of a rolling stock strategy.

While this study presents a thorough evaluation of rolling stock procurement practices, it is limited by its geographic isolation. Future studies should compare the procurement practices discussed here to others in the EU, as well as in North America, South America and Asia. Additionally, this study focused on the passenger rail segment. Passenger transport is an important function of the rail network in the EU, but future research should expand the assessment of rolling stock procurement strategies to freight rail as well.

Overall, this work provides visibility into common rolling stock procurement practices in complex EU railway markets. This work expands the literature through a review of these practices and through enabling research into best practices or a commonly accepted procurement model.

Public construction authorities need to evaluate the level of competition in the submitted bids for a certain project before awarding the contract. A lack of adequate competition is a reason for rejecting all bids and reissuing an invitation to bid for the project. This paper aims to present an analysis of the adequacy of competition in public construction projects.

The paper uses five competition indicators to correlate the level of competition effect obtained with the number of contractors competing for the project. The analysis is based on the bid opening results for 917 public construction projects in Jordan that include 6,309 bids, with an average number of 6.88 bids per project.

The results illustrate that there is an improvement in the competition effect over the five analyzed competition indicators as the number of bidders increases. However, the rate of improvement decreases with the increase in bidders. The empirical analysis performed does not support the proposition that an optimum number of bidders exists in competitive bidding for construction projects or the proposition that a higher number of bidders may lead to higher bid prices. However, the indicators developed in this study found that at least 5 bidders are recommended and after 8 bidders, the rate of improvement continues at much slower rate.

The current research presented a multifaceted method for assessing the minimum number of bidders needed to ensure a competitive bidding process. Moreover, the research used actual data from 917 public projects.

Ghana’s legal framework for procurement has undergone substantial reform to increase its efficacy. However, disregard for legal obligations set forth has resulted in issues of fraud, corruption and poor oversight. This study seeks to synthesize literature on the recognition of legal obligations arising from tendering procedures and measures to promote fairness, transparency and accountability under Ghana’s procurement framework.

Legal frameworks and publications from diverse countries have been synthesized using a systematic literature review across three databases (Scopus, JSTOR and HeinOnline) to illuminate key concepts, issues and best practices relevant to the study. Data obtained from included publications was synthesized using Sandelowski and Barroso’s two-step approach by using a qualitative meta-summary and thematic synthesis.

The study reveals that issues of conflict of interest, corruption, lack of capacity, inadequate oversight and insufficient legal follow-through hinder the effectiveness of procurement regulations. The findings highlight the need for targeted improvements in resource allocation for consistent application of transparency measures, regular publication of notices and robust enforcement of accountability mechanisms. The report proposes the creation of a common data environment for networking and information dissemination, implementing feedback systems and trust rating schemes.

The study contributes to the body of knowledge on procurement regulation by providing a thorough analysis of Ghana’s procurement framework. The findings will help policymakers close the observed implementation gaps by guiding the revision of current legislation and the introduction of new regulations. Research findings can be used to guide the creation of focused training courses.

This study, one of the first of its kind in Ghana, examines the current procurement framework, including legal obligations and implementation challenges. It contributes to the body of knowledge on the subject by providing a current and fact-based analysis as well as relevant recommendations for strengthening the framework.

Skewed pricing is a typical tactic used by tenderers in unit price projects to gain additional advantages at the expense of the owner or other competing tenderers. This paper aims to describe the development of a model for detecting skewed pricing in competitive tendering for unit price contracts.

The model evaluates how much the offered unit rates for work items deviate from the reasonable rate identified from the item’s submitted unit rates. Item rate deviations are integrated into a total deviation score for each submitted tender based on the relative weight of the work item to the total project amount. The model allows for assigning higher weights to work items that are more prone to skewed pricing, such as those that are performed early and those that are expected to experience quantity fluctuations.

The paper presents a detection model that uses only the submitted prices of the competing tenderers to perform the needed calculations, which reduces subjectivity in identifying skewed tenders. Two examples are given to demonstrate how the model may be used to detect skewed tenders.

The model supports tendering officials in the challenging task of identifying skewed tenders, which is required by rules and regulations governing public procurement. The model’s ease of use is expected to make it more widely used as a decision-support tool during the tender evaluation stage of real-world projects.

The South African Government announced the black economic empowerment (BEE) legislation in 2003 in the public procurement systems. The legislation was deemed a catalyst for the emancipation of the previously disadvantaged citizens due to the apartheid government policies that secluded them from economic activities. This study aims to explore the challenges of black construction professionals with the BEE as a procurement policy.

This study adopted a qualitative research approach. Thirty-five black construction professionals were contacted for interviews, of which 21 responded. Due to the COVID-19 restriction, participants were interviewed using telephone interview techniques. The information received was analysed using the thematic contents analysis method.

The findings revealed the challenges confronting black construction professionals regarding the BEE policy as corrupt practices (leading to the award of contracts to unqualified people), fronting of contractors and individuals for unqualified firms, preventing the participation of experienced and foreign firms, poor policy implementation with no monitoring mechanism and loss of tender due to strict requirements.

Urgent attention is needed to review the BEE policy implementation process by the South African government to address the challenges enumerated by the policy beneficiaries to ensure the achievement of the policy objectives.

This study has identified the challenges of the BEE policy; thus, the government can institute measures to address the hindrances thwarting the beneficiaries from realising the policy objectives.

This study aims to investigate ground-related design deficiencies as potential avenues of avoidable cost overruns, discernible from the geotechnical practices of highway agencies in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

The study deploys an interpretivist qualitative methodology to provide a detailed descriptive analysis of the design-related geotechnical practices of highway agencies during the pre-contract phase of highway projects. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with in-house professionals, consultants and contractors affiliated with the three highway agencies in the Niger Delta and thematically analysed to identify significant deviations from geotechnical best practices.

The study outcome shows that during the pre-contract phase, a chain of design-related geotechnical shortcomings has plagued highway projects executed in the Niger Delta. This view of practice uncovered in this study demonstrates a culture of significant deviation from best practice recommendations, which could plausibly contribute to the history of significant project cost overruns recorded in the region.

The study qualitatively spotlights gaps in the practice of highway agencies and reinforces the need for a re-orientation of the attitude to risk management, to give geotechnical concerns a priority in the financial management of highway projects executed in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria.

Fraud within the procurement process remains a persistent challenge, resulting in substantial financial losses and lack of social justice. This paper underscores the significance of records for the integrity of the procurement practices and proposes using blockchain technology to mitigate records fraud. Analyzing international regulations this paper highlights their emphasis on proper records management for promoting transparency, accountability, and integrity of procurement procedures. This paper aims to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between records management and procurement accountability while addressing blockchain technology's innovative use in mitigating records forgery and omission.

This research involves a comparative analysis of international regulations investigating their directives on the relevance of records in public procurement and a survey of records fraud cases in the Brazilian context to illustrate the significance of the problem and to indicate how blockchain technology can be applied as a solution to ensure accountability and prevent records forgery and omission.

The findings highlight the explicit importance ascribed to proper records management by international regulations, and indicates how blockchain technology can serve as a valuable resource to reduce the records fraud opportunity in public procurement.

The research does not consider context-specific regulations. The survey of frauds is limited to the Brazilian context.

This research introduces a pioneering approach by investigating the use of blockchain technology to combat records forgery or omission in public procurement procedures.

Delays in utility shifting during road construction have broad ramifications. These delays not only lengthen the project's timeline but also raise expenses and cause problems with resource allocation. Thus, this study investigates the influence of delay in utility shifting for extension of time claims in road construction projects (RCPs) in Sri Lanka.

The study used a quantitative approach with three rounds of Delphi surveys to gather empirical data. Further, the probability impact assessment was used to carefully analyse the data and appraise the information gathered.

The findings initially revealed 33 causes of delays in utility shifting for extension of time claims in RCPs in Sri Lanka. Ultimately, 11 severe causes were identified based on their high probability and impact, concluding with 45 strategies that were assigned to overcoming those most severe causes of delay.

This study will contribute to the industry and theory by providing solutions to handle utility-shifting delays with the linkage of preventing time extension claims for RCPs in Sri Lanka. Further, there is a dearth of literature in the research area, both locally and globally. Thus, the findings of this research will provide a benchmark for further detailed studies in other countries as well.

Extant research documents the cost benefits of group purchasing organizations (GPOs) to member hospitals, but understudies concerns about the market dominance of a few large GPOs and the relatively weakened buyer power of hospitals in the US healthcare product supply chain. To fill the gap in the literature, this study investigates whether GPO size and a hospital’s relative power to its GPO affect the hospital’s supply expenses, and whether and how system membership moderates the power–performance link.

For this study, we collect the panel data from various secondary sources on GPO–hospital dyads, which include the seven largest GPOs and their 2,590 unique acute care hospital members in 51 states over the period of 2009–2017. To address the endogeneity issue associated with simultaneity, we establish a one-year time lag between dependent and independent variables and analyzed the 15,527 hospital-year observations using the time-series regression with fixed-effect.

We find that a hospital’s relative power to its GPO is the most critical factor to reduce its supply cost while GPO size has no effects. We also find that a nonsystem hospital achieves greater cost savings by leveraging its relative power to its GPO while a system hospital gains no benefits.

To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to address the paradox of GPO size and a hospital’s relative power and the moderating role of system membership for the hospital’s purchasing efficiency using a large nation-wide dataset of US hospitals–GPO dyads.