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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the economic and legal rationale for the use of the competitive dialogue in complex procurement. The authors use the data set of public contracts awarded by European Union (EU) member states between 2010 and 2017 to analyse its usage patterns. In particular, the authors identify the types of contracting authorities that mainly use the procedure, the sectors and contract characteristics and the role of institutional factors related to the country’s perceived corruption and level of innovativeness.

The authors discuss economic and legal issues in the use of the competitive dialogue. The authors use a data set of public contracts awarded by EU member states, published on the EU’s public procurement portal Tenders Electronic Daily (TED) to analyse usage patterns and explore the types of contracting authorities that use the procedure, the sectors and type of tenders. The data covers a sample of 1.242.090 observations, which relates to all the contract award notices published on TED in the period 2010-2017 for all the 28 European member states. A probit model is used as a methodology.

The empirical analysis reveals that the use of competitive value is greater for larger value contracts, for national rather than local authorities, for the supply of other manufactured products and machinery; for research and development and business, as well as information technology services; and for construction works. The level of perceived corruption and the gross domestic product/capita do not have explanatory power in the use of the procedure, whilst a country’s degree of innovativeness, as measured by the global innovation index, positively affects the probability of adopting the procedure. A decreasing trend in the use of competitive dialogue over time is observed.

In conclusion, the countries examined benefited from a long tradition of public–private partnerships (PPPs) and from a transposition of the 2004 directive, able to provide an inclusive interpretation of complexity, and therefore, stimulate the adoption of the competitive dialogue in different sectors. Conversely, the countries, which postponed a concrete transposition and the overcoming of the confusing concept of complexity, limited the scope for the application of competitive dialogue, relying on the easier alternative: the negotiated procedure. Those circumstances lead to visible difficulties in stimulating the adoption of the procedure even in the traditional sectors; indeed, only with the new directive’s provisions a slight change in the trend can be seen.

To foster the use of the competitive dialogue in countries that have so far used it to a limited extent is important to improve upon the definition of complexity and learn from the experience of the top usage countries, as identified in the analysis.

Helping the use of the procedure may facilitate the procurement of complex contracts such as PPPs, and thus, ease the building and management of public infrastructures for the provision of public services.

The authors are not aware of previous studies that have used the TED data set and studied the law in a number of European countries so as to understand the usage patterns for the competitive dialogue.

This study aims to explore the experiences of using competitive dialogue (CD) as a procurement procedure and the freedom it provides to the contracting parties in Norway.

This study opted for qualitative research design. Data were collected from four case projects through document reviews and in-depth interviews with procurement experts and key contract partners of the projects.

Results indicate that CD has some room for maneuver that is worth trying. Furthermore, the research identified several measures that can be implemented to use the procedure effectively. Contracting parties that have used the procedure have had various positive experiences.

The findings have implications in improving project outputs, building better trust and cooperation between the contracting parties and better use of public money on projects that have lasting outcomes for the society.

The authors studied four actual projects that used CD as a procurement procedure and aimed to provide first-hand information on the degree of freedom that it offered to the contracting parties.

Markets for public contracting are in the process of transition. Various public/private partnership arrangements replace conventional purchasing, especially within the local and regional government area. Municipal entities may not be in a position to define their needs up-front because they would not have the overview of what the market may have to offer. So one should ask: Is the traditional ban-on-negotiations in mandatory tender procedures (sealed bidding) - such as it is in EU public procurement law - counter-effective to genuine best value for public money? The article displays significant differences between European Union (EU) law, U.S. law and other regimes such as United Nations Model law, The World Trade Organisation’s Government Procurement Agreement (WTO/GPA), The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), and the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement). New avenues for public/private demand a new agenda and the recent EU 2004 directive scheme attempts to respond to the market challenges. The author accepts that the new directive on public contracting facilitates a more smooth approach than in current EU law with regard to high-tech complicated contract awards, but questions whether the ’competitive dialogue’ really can afford tailor-made solutions to cope with long-term public/private partnership arrangements of the kind now spreading all over Europe

The purpose of this paper is to show that technical complexity in construction projects is intensified by complexity in public decision making. Public authorities need to build on the conflicting imperatives of fostering cooperation with their (potential) contractors and following strict procurement regulations to enhance competition.

The paper uses a comparative analysis of the English and Belgian legal systems. The comparison is based on traditional legal analysis of the primary sources, cases and their scholarly comments. It is supplemented, when appropriate, by project management concepts.

The analysis in the paper suggests that awarding authorities do not always resolve the conflict between cooperation and competition for themselves. There is a range of alternative techniques embedded in the legal system.

The paper suggests that developing tools for successful construction processes requires perspectives building in both law and project management, taking into account the institutional contexts in which projects are carried out.

The ways in which the implementation of EU procurement directives interacts with the dynamics particular to legal systems, and therefore diverges in their actual results, are often overlooked as the literature more often studies the harmonizing effects of these EU directives within the internal market.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new procurement strategy with the aim to achieve higher value for money (VFM) in public works delivery. Its main innovation lies in the possibility of optional submission of cost-efficient design variants by any interested contractor within the context of an open procedure. The final scope of works incorporates the variants approved, and all contractors are invited to submit a bid for the revised scope and budget.

This paper is a piece of applied research presenting the development of a new, cost-effective procurement strategy for public works, geared at the European Union (EU) legal framework. The strategy’s feature compilation has been based on comprehensive literature review while numerical data from a real world project were used to demonstrate its financial advantages.

The proposed strategy enables the delivery of the best value project at the lowest cost possible. This is achieved through ensuring high competition among competent contractors, improving the cost efficiency of technical solutions, discouraging future scope changes and establishing objectivity, fairness and transparency in the process of contract award.

The use of the proposed strategy results in public projects of enhanced VFM, reduced constructability issues and less scope changes during the construction stage.

The proposed strategy marks a new approach in procurement which enables the delivery of best VFM in public works. Therefore, it makes a valuable contribution towards the achievement of the overarching EU target for efficient public spending.

This paper aims to review the existing practices of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in the building sectors in European countries, to be able to assess its suitability for housing provision while focussing on the social impact.

Based on the sectoral spread of PPP, nine European countries were included in this study. Formative evaluation is used to structure the review based on four key attributes of PPPs to develop a comprehensive understanding of the existing PPP procedures and guidelines amongst these countries. Data were gathered through public and governmental reports, consultant reports, country guidelines, standards and procedures, and cases, in order to identify the prevalent practices and trends in these countries.

The review identified the need to calibrate the PPP approach towards other stakeholders, particularly the end-users. It further highlighted the need to focus on social integration and social sustainability and establish set procedures for PPPs in housing to create a credible and trustworthy environment for the investors. Joint support from private and public partners and community participation has a diverse impact on the success of PPP in housing.

This review shall enable governments, industry and stakeholders to make provisions and policies for overcoming the challenges identified with regard to PPPs and pave the way for its application in the housing sector ensuring a positive social impact.

This review shall facilitate greater involvement of end-users and enhancing social integration in housing through PPP, and pave the way towards creating cohesive communities by focussing on the concept of togetherness and social sustainability.

This study provides a holistic summation of the prevalent PPP practices and broadens the adaptations for the housing sector. The novelty of this paper specifically lies in learning from PPP practices across other building sectors for adapting its utilisation for housing and thereby extending the state of art for PPP housing.

The purpose of this paper was to examine the challenges and opportunities the new public procurement legislation has created for academic librarians as regards the acquisition of library materials in academic libraries (university/college libraries) in Malawi.

The study used a multi-method approach. Quantitative data were collected through questionnaires. The questionnaires were sent online to the university/college libraries of seven major accredited public universities in Malawi. After an initial analysis of that data, qualitative data on patterns were obtained through a mailing listserve with all the possible 19 librarians. Responses were analysed and categorised using a thematic approach.

Academic libraries (university/college libraries) are involved in the internal procurement committees. Librarians are represented in internal procurement committees, though their representation differs from one institution to another. All the academic libraries (university/college libraries) either use the centralised or independent procurement methods. As a result, the public university libraries deal with agents as independents. Working as independents has negatively affected the libraries, as materials are procured at different prices and sometimes at higher prices, thereby ignoring the value for money.

In academic libraries, the library consortia have pulled resources towards a basket fund for wide access and cheaper licensing. However, for print library materials, a collaborative procurement process in which the academic libraries identify an agent capable of achieving a supplier list and then purchase directly from the preferred suppliers seems not to have been tried in the most developing countries.

The study suggests that academic libraries (university/college libraries) should emulate the library consortia approach when dealing with agents. The academic libraries should consider collaborative procurement models as a means of procuring library materials.

Since the enactment of the public procurement legislation in Malawi, no research has been documented on the challenges and opportunities the public procurement act and the acquisition of library materials. This research seeks to bridge the literature gap.

Early contractor involvement (ECI) faces many barriers when it is implemented in public procurement, given that it is different from traditional business practices. Primarily, public owners face a major challenge, as they should treat all bidders equally. The purpose of this paper is to explore suitable ECI approaches that public owners could use.

In addition to a literature and document study, 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews with key personnel from 11 cases selected from Norwegian public bridge projects were carried out.

In all, 23 unique approaches of ECI were identified during this research (16 from literature and 7 new from case projects). The findings provide a new direction to ECI through introducing new approaches of ECI from the case projects.

This paper for the first time presents several alternatives of ECI approaches for public owners with the intention of illustrating ECI is actually possible in the public project procurement. Furthermore, it presents for the first time success factors of ECI with the intention of increasing the understanding of ECI concept from a public procurement perspective.

Because of the renewed interest in public purchasing and the strategic use of public funds under the requirements of sustainable development, the question arose once again as to how to curb the fall of institutional quality once criteria other than price are inserted into the decision-making in public purchasing. E-procurement has been repeatedly named as one of the most efficient tools to that effect and the present paper sets out to discover whether the implementation of e-procurement in a particular country per se entails also higher institutional quality, allowing for a wider implementation of green and sustainable procurement at the national, regional and municipal level without the fear of worsening the country’s institutional quality. By analyzing the implementation of e-procurement in Denmark, the Netherlands and in Portugal, this paper aims to verify the hypothesis that the implementation of e-procurement implies better institutions in terms of public purchasing. As such, the conclusions will be used in further research on the prerequisites for a successful implementation of green public procurement across the European Union.

Gathering data on institutional quality of three early e-procurement adopters (Denmark, the Netherlands and Portugal) allows for comparison of institutional quality pre- and post-e-procurement implementation. By using difference-in-differences comparison the paper seeks to answer the question how doesmandatory e-procurement influence institutional quality on the national level.

The paper finds that the reform is generally associated with a relatively stronger control of corruption in the Netherlands and Denmark, while a similar reform in Portugal failed to translate into a stronger control of corruption. Furthermore, while using the quality of regulation as a dependent variable, a positive and robust effect on the quality of regulation in Denmark was shown, while the quality of reputation in the Netherlands and Portugal declined in the post-reform period, with the drop in the quality of regulation in Portugal being considerably greater, a two-fold higher amount than the estimated drop in the Netherlands. The paper suggests that in spite of the same aims, the reform yielded substantially different or even opposing effects compared to Denmark.

By examining three examples of early adopters, further research with broader impact is needed to deduce general implications for e-procurement implementation. Furthermore, implementation of e-procurement at the regional or local level can also yield distinct results.

Understanding the actual impact of e-procurement on institutional quality is indispensable for further study on the matter. The present study argues that e-procurement needs to be accompanied by additional measures or variables to yield a positive impact on institutional quality in public procurement.

As to originality, the present paper uses a law and economics approach, originating or better said drawing motivation from green public procurement concerns, trying to provide an insight in terms of tools that can be used to eliminate concerns regarding institutional quality when implementing green public procurement practices.

Traditionally, in the Netherlands, the procurement procedure for infrastructure does not start until the public decision-making procedure is fully completed. In the new procurement strategy, early contractor involvement is applied by carrying out the procurement procedure and the public planning procedure simultaneously. This article explores the first experiences and lessons learned with early contractor involvement in four Dutch infrastructure projects. It can be concluded that the new strategy adds value in terms of time gains, improved project control and more innovative solutions. However, to optimize early contractor involvement, the differences between the competitive procurement procedures and the open, cooperative public planning procedures need to be bridged.