Management of Bid Evaluation Risks in Procurement of Construction Projects of Public Tertiary Institutions in Nigeria

Abstract

Bid evaluation stage in project procurement is considered to be one of the critical stages in the public procurement process in Nigeria. This stage determines the outcome of tendering process and can easily be manipulated by procurement officer that wants to favour a particular bidder to be awarded a contract. However, this stage is plagued with risks that impact on contract parties and project objectives. Thus, this article aimed to assess bid evaluation risks management strategies for construction procurement of tertiary institution in Nigeria with a view to ensuring effective delivery of construction projects. The study employed the survey design approach by administering 150 structured questionnaires to purposively selected construction professionals of procurement and physical planning units of tertiary institutions in three states and the Federal Capital Territory. The collected data were analysed using Relative Importance Index (RII) to identify relatively the most important risks factors in the bid evaluation stage of procurement process. Regression analysis was employed to determine the impact of the identified bid evaluation risk factors on parties and the impact on project objectives. The study found that in-house information leakages to bidders (RII=0.97), failure to declare a winner leading to subjective discussions or development of new criteria (RII=0.87), unclear definition of technical specification (RII=0.85) and use of inappropriate evaluation criteria (RII=0.80), are the important bid evaluation risks factors in construction procurement. The study also found that the bid evaluation risks have statistically significant impact on project objectives in terms of time, cost, quality, safety and environment; as well as the parties to the contract all with p-values less than 0.05 significance level. It concluded that any change in the bid evaluation risk factors would lead to a corresponding change in the project objectives. It is recommended that procurement officer should use checklist guide and brainstorm on measure to be established to control bid evaluation risks for effective delivery of construction projects