Evaluation of Competitive Bids
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 121, Issue 2
Abstract
The evaluation of competitive bids is a difficult process with little objective guidance provided to those who make the decisions to accept or reject bids. A quantitative evaluation method is proposed to utilize a collective assessment of project value, a measure of disagreement, and an expected recurrence relationship in order to identify unreasonably low bids. The unreasonable bids could then be subject to verification, investigation, or rejection based upon the agency's preference. In doing this careful evaluation of bids, public agencies may accomplish most, if not all, of the objectives currently sought by the alternative procurement procedures while remaining consistent with the low-bid philosophy.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
1.
Barnett, V., and Lewis, T. (1984). Outliers in statistical data, 2nd Ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, N.Y.
2.
Bid Protests at GAO: a descriptive guide, 4th Ed. (1991). U.S. Government Printing Ofc., Washington, D.C.
3.
Brown, M. B., and Forsythe, A. B. (1974). “Robust tests of the equality of variance.”J. Am. Statistical Assoc., Vol. 69, 364–367.
4.
Canterbury, J. F. Jr. (1981). Texas construction law manual . McGraw-Hill, New York, N.Y.
5.
Capen, E. C., Clapp, R. V., and Campbell, W. (1971). “Competitive bidding in high risk situations.”J. Petroleum Technol., (Jun.), 641–653.
6.
Conover, W. J., Johnson, M. E., and Johnson, M. M. (1981). “A comparative study of tests for homogeneity of variances, with applications to the outer continental shelf bidding data.”Technometrics, Vol. 23, 351–361.
7.
Crowley, L. G. (1992). “Risk assessment of competitive procurement in public agencies,” PhD dissertation, Texas A & M Univ., at College Station, Tex.
8.
Crowley, L. G. (1994). “Computer-based risk assessment of competitive procurement.”1st Congress of Computing in Civ. Engrg., ASCE, New York, N.Y., 1540–1547.
9.
Cushman, R. F., and Yue, J. A. (1990). “Protesting and challenging the owner's award on state and local projects.”Construction bidding law, R. F. Cushman and W. J. Doyle, eds., John Wiley & Sons, New York, N.Y., 125–164.
10.
Doke, M. J. (1964). “Mistakes in government contracts—error detection duty of contracting officers.”Southwestern Law J., Vol. 18, 1–45.
11.
Emerson, J. D., and Sternio, J. (1983). “Boxplots and batch comparisons.”Understanding robust and exploratory data analysis, D. C. Hoaglin et al., eds., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, N.Y., 58–96.
12.
Emerson, J. D., and Stoto, M. (1983). “Transforming data.”Understanding robust and exploratory data analysis. D. C. Hoaglin et al., eds., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, N.Y., 97–128.
13.
Federal acquisition regulations. (1984). U.S. Government Printing Ofc., Washington, D.C.
14.
Gavin, D. G., Goodman, A. H., and Holland, J. K. (1990). “Rights and remedies of the disappointed bidder under federal grant programs.”Construction bidding law, R. F. Cushman and W. J. Doyle, eds., John Wiley & Sons, New York, N.Y., 197–232.
15.
Grossberg, M. E. (1965). “The competitive bidding requirement.”Texas Law Rev., Vol. 44, 82–105.
16.
Henriod, E. E., and Lantran, J.-M. (1991). “Trends in contracting practice for civil works.”Innovative contracting practices, circular No. 386. Transp. Res. Board (TRB), Washington, D.C.
17.
Hojo, T. (1931). “Distribution of the median, quartiles and interquartile distance in samples from a normal population.”Biometrika, Vol. 23, 315–360.
18.
Innovative contracting practices, circular No. 386. (1991). Transp. Res. Board (TRB), Washington, D.C.
19.
Ioannou, P. G., and Leu, S.-S.(1993). “Average-bid method—competitive bidding strategy.”J. Constr. Engrg. and Mgmt., ASCE, 119(1), 131–147.
20.
Lehmann, M. P. (1991). “Contract claims and disputes on Texas highway construction projects,” MS thesis, Texas A & M Univ., College Station, Tex.
21.
Lubell, B. I. (1932). “Unilateral palpable and impalpable mistake in construction contracts.”Minnesota Law Rev., Vol. 16, 137–159.
22.
Nair, K. R. (1948). “The distribution of the extreme deviate from the sample mean and its Studentized form.”Biometrika, Vol. 35, 118–144.
23.
Skitmore, M. (1989). Contract bidding in construction . Longman Scientific & Technical, Essex, England.
24.
Tukey, J. W. (1970). Exploratory data analysis (limited preliminary edition ). Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 121 • Issue 2 • June 1995
Pages: 238 - 245
Copyright
Copyright © 1995 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Jun 1, 1995
Published in print: Jun 1995
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.