Contractor bidders selection

The Project Manager must work with the Contract Engineer to qualify and select capable bidders. If the project is in an existing plant site, the selection process must be done in close cooperation with the plant personnel since they must approve all contractors working in their plant. In the case of small projects, especially if the execution approach calls for multiple subcontractors, the volume of work will not be large enough to attract national contractors and the choice will be among small or medium-sized, local contractors. 

The following example has been taken from the file of an actual project. It illustrates the procedure followed for the final selection of a contractor from a list of bidders who had been qualified previously. 

On a process plant construction site there were 19 principal construction contractors. Each contract had been awarded on a competitive tendering basis from a short pre-selected list of bidders. On the whole, the contracts ran smoothly, any claims for... 

The tender includes detailed technical and contractual information upon which the Contractors base their bids. The tender procedure usually requires Contractors to prove their ability to construct the works (technical bid). Once the Contractors have gone through this selection procedure successfully, the project is usually favoured to the lowest bidder. The Tender Documents make up the basis of the contract between the Client and the Contractor. 

Some organizations are uncomfortable with disqualifying bidders based on their safety record, but this is now a common practice in industry and government. Selection criteria range from a simple numerical EMR or incidence limits, to qualitative evaluations, to complex numerical scoring assigned to both performance and answers, to a series of questions. Some examples of simple contractor acceptance criteria are provided in Table 5-2. 

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