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The purpose of this paper is to examine the views of construction practitioners on the prevalence of ethical misconduct within the invitation to tender and tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts in Ghana.

Following a critical comparative review of literature resulting in the identification of 18 potential misconducts within the invitation to tender and 11 potential misconducts within the tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 65 construction professionals. Data obtained from the survey were analysed using both descriptive (i.e. frequencies, mean scores and standard deviations) and inferential statistics (paired t-test), followed by gap analysis.

The findings revealed that corrupt, fraudulent, collusive or coercive practices, client divulging more information to the preferred bidder and inflating tender prices by tenderers in return for kickbacks are key unethical practices prevalent at the invitation to tender stage. Following these key unethical practices, the findings further suggested through gap analysis that submission of bids on non-working days and inadequate time for preparation and submission of tenders were the top two unethical practices that needed serious interventions at this stage. At the tender evaluation and award stage, the findings revealed that interference by influential people in political positions, fake tendering and bid shopping are prevalent. Again, from the gap analysis, interference by influential people in political positions and poor definition of selection criteria were identified to be the two key unethical practices that need urgent intervention at this stage of construction contracts.

This study holds a significant practical implication in the sense that key unethical practices at the invitation to tender and tender evaluation and award stages of construction contracts have been identified, and this provides a suitable basis for stakeholders that spearhead such activities to offer suitable interventions to control such practices.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge as it uncovers ethical misconducts within two important phases of construction contracts in a developing country setting. As there is a continuous effort by the international community towards finding lasting solutions to such misconducts, the findings from this study can be used as a starting point for appropriate policies to be put in place in Ghana to control such misconducts.

The paper discusses the reasons for putting a project out to tender. Emphasis is given to the need for realistic timescales. The preparation of the invitation is described and advice given on selecting suitable suppliers to be approached. Indications are given about how to set out clearly what is required and acceptable. The purpose and conduct of various meetings between customers and tenderers are outlined. A list of 6 skills is given on which the preparation of a tender relies. The paper goes on to demonstrate how to evaluate a tender, and concludes with 3 rules for inclusion in the invitation to tender.

During the tendering process for most major construction contracts there is the opportunity for bidders to suggest alternative innovative solutions. Clearly clients are keen to take advantage of these opportunities, and equally contractors want to use their expertise to establish competitive advantage. Both parties may very well benefit from the encouragement of such innovation and the availability of cheaper methods of construction than have been contemplated by the tendering authority. However recent developments in common law have raised doubts about the ability of owners to seek alternative tenders without placing themselves at risk of litigation. This common law has recognised the existence of the so‐called “tendering contract” or “process contract”. Since the tendering process is inherently price competitive, the application of the tendering contract concept is likely to severely inhibit the opportunity for alternative tenders. The “tendering contract” is automatically brought into being upon the timely submission of a conforming tender. This is contrary to the traditional view that an invitation to tender was considered to be no more than an invitation to treat, therefore submission of a tender creates obligations for neither party. Under the “tendering contract”, the owner becomes obliged to treat all tenderers equally and fairly. This paper is primarily based on the literature review. The aim of this paper is to highlight the problems with the competitive tendering process in relation to contractor‐led innovation and explore ways in which owners can develop procurement procedures that will allow and encourage innovation from contractors.

Outlines the procedures used in Central Government when compiling an Invitation to Tender. The author points out that one supplier is unlikely to provide a total system; so care is needed when selecting. The first step is the production of the Operational Requirement which details the job and the organisational needs. The Government Procurement procedures for dedicated computer systems are described, and the way in which tenders are assessed and selected. Some guidance is given regarding matters which should be specified in the Invitation to Tender. The paper goes on to discuss the similar procedures for the procurement of computer services listing what the service industry can be expected to provide. The paper ends with a list of 6 ways in which the user can lay the foundations for a good Invitation to Tender.

Socially responsible procurement is increasingly attracting public attention, but little is known about the use of social requirements in public procurement process in developing countries. This study explores the use of social criteria in public procurement in Nigeria. Data was collected from two websites being used for advertising public sector contract opportunities in Nigeria and by means of a questionnaire. Results show that public procurement is mostly used to promote a range of government policies and programmes. Based on the findings from this study, it cannot be concluded that a milestone has been reached in the use of public procurement to drive social benefits in Nigeria. The extent to which the findings of this study could be generalised is limited, because the findings are based on analysis of tender documents and a smallsized convenience sample of public procurement experts. A larger sample size may lead to improved accuracy or dissimilar results. Nevertheless, the research offers some baseline data against which future studies on social procurement can be conducted and evaluated.

This guide was commissioned by the British Library Research and Development Department, on the advice of the Group for Research into Public Libraries. It was produced as the result of a research project, the first stage of which was a survey of automated issue systems in public libraries in the United Kingdom. The survey was published as a special issue of VINE (No. 52, December 1983), and showed a clear trend towards the provision of online, stand‐alone systems, often including functions other than circulation control, and usually provided on a turnkey basis. For the second stage of study, it was decided to concentrate on these systems, and to compile a guide and checklist on their selection and installation, which could be used by librarians considering automation, or in the process of replacing a system. The study was carried out over the period December 1983 — February 1984.

Turkey transformed the public procurement procedures in year 2002 by two laws; Public Procurement Law and Public Procurement Contracts Law. This situation brought about challenges for the stakeholders from both the public sector and private sector. This paper presents an analysis of the new public procurement procedures to understand the path from the determination of the need to the signing of the contract as well as several special provisions for consultancy services, complaint reviews and statistics of the last two years.

The legislation in the European Union (EU) regarding contracts to be awarded to third parties allows for a free choice by public agencies between the open and restricted procedure. Empirical evidence shows a high variance in the preference for one of the procedures exists between countries. This preference may be based on cultural phenomena only. Here we develop a quantitative model to calculate which procedure is the most economic. With insights from this model guidelines are given for an efficient policy regarding the choice for the open or restricted award procedure.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the period for which a public procurement notice remains open for bidding (Δt) affects the number of bids.

The authors investigated data for 2.404 open procurement tenders in Greece for the years 2018–2021. Using Δt as the grouping factor, the authors defined two samples based on the European Union time limits for the receipt of tenders. Group 1 (Δt ≤ 35) contains all tenders for which the contracting authorities (CAs) have chosen to limit themselves to the minimum number of days allowed by law. Group 2 (Δt>35) includes the remaining tenders where CAs have chosen to keep their notices open for periods beyond the existing minimum time limits, as they are encouraged to do by law.

A Mann–Whitney U test, in combination with graphical analysis, revealed that CAs from Group 2 tend to enjoy more bids per tender, that is, more intense competition.

The paper allows decision-makers and legislators to understand the relationship between the time CAs choose to keep their notices open for bidding and the number of bidders in each tender, that is, competition, which according to other authors, affects the outcomes of public procurement procedures.

The paper fills the research gap regarding the relationship between time for preparation and the number of bids in each tender.

Searching the tender notices that publish every day in open tendering websites is a common way for finding business opportunity in public procurement. The heterogeneity of tender notices from various tendering marketplaces is a challenge for exploiting semantic technologies in the tender search.

Most of the semantic matching approaches require the data to be structured and integrated according to a data model. But the integration process can be expensive and time-consuming especially for multi-source data integration.

In this paper, a product search mechanism that had been developed in an e-procurement platform for matching product e-catalogues is applied to the tender search problem. The search performance has been compared using two procurement vocabularies on searching tender notices from two major tender resources.

The test results show that the matching mechanism is able to find tender notices from heterogeneous resources and different classification systems without transforming the tenders to a uniform data model.