29-11-2012, 05:59 PM
Decision Support for Web-based Prequalification Tender Management System in Construction Projects
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Introduction
In the ninth Malaysian Plan, the government attempts to optimize the use of Information
Communication and Technology (ICT) infrastructure in delivering information to the people
(Unit, 2006). Web-based application is being used as a medium to distribute useful
information to the people in the most effective way. Most of the public sectors in Malaysia
are utilizing Web system in their daily practices, but in several complicated processes, they
are still using conventional way in processing the related documents. One of the examples is
tendering processes in construction industry.
Tendering processes in construction industry normally will consume longer time to process
all tender documents and there are some standard procedures to be followed. Standard
procedures for construction in Malaysia are underlined by Department of Work (JKR). As
the government is moving towards electronic tendering for the construction industry at the
national level, most of public sectors publish open tender advertisements in government
Web services but application to handle electronic tendering processes in construction
industry has not been completely developed yet. Thus, the construction industry remains to
be the most complex and fragmented industry in Malaysia (Weng & Alsagoff, 2006).
Prequalification is an initial phase in tendering processes where all tender documents will
be screened out to select the compliance contractor. Prequalification is important as it can
minimize risk of construction projects. In this phase, the contractor has to fulfill the tender
documents according to the client request. It also provides an analysis on the tender
documents by filtering the qualified contractors that have completed all tender documents
properly.
Literature review
Current practices of tendering processes - background
Tender is an invitation to offer for an item or work. According to Du et al., tendering process
is an invitation to those relevant parties to make an offer to the principal, which must be
capable of accepting the offer, thereby creating a legally binding contract (Du et al., 2004).
Principal is any party inviting and receiving tenders whilst the client may include a
contractor. Tenderer is any party whose submitting tenders, including contractor,
subcontractor and supplier (Du et al., 2004).
Tenders can be divided into several types such as open, restricted and negotiation tender.
Open tender is a tender that offered to any interested contractors. Negotiated tender is
carried out under special circumstances whereby is done when the clients need some
expertise that capable in doing such projects. Restricted tender is applied when purchase
authority has procedure in place which will definitely lead to the award of a contract. The
procedure is restricted because contractors are first invited to express an interest and those
contractors that have qualified against certain criteria are invited to submit tender (Du et al.,
2004). Tendering processes is a complex process. A typical one involves lots of business
procedures such as tender specification preparation, tender advertisement, tender
aggregation, tender evaluation, tender awarding, and contract monitoring (Ng et al., 2007).
Prequalification tendering process
Prequalification tendering process is to identify qualified constructors based on some
criteria as requested by clients. Besides that, this stage also certifies all the prequalification
documents that are required to be submitted by constructors. Prequalification stage is
generally preferred by clients to minimize the risks and failures. It also will enhance the
performance levels of selected contractors. (Palaneeswaran & Kumaraswamy, 2001).
The prequalification tendering practices are different between countries according to the
rules, regulations and procedures to be followed. In the study done by Palaneeswaran and
Kumaraswamy, they examined several prequalification practices in Hong Kong, Australia
and USA (Palaneeswaran & Kumaraswamy, 2001).
Construction Industry Development Agency (CIDA) in Australia has recommended three
categories of prequalification criteria namely mandatory, additional and reserved.
Technical, financial, quality assurance, time performance, human resource management,
skill, occupational health and safety are considered as mandatory whilst claims performance
and research development are regarded as additional and reserved. However, construction
industry in Hong Kong has identified several different prequalification criteria such as
experience, corporate, workload, support functions, resources and facilities. Whilst in USA,
different public clients use various prequalification ratings.
Scenarios of electronic tendering system
The transparent procurement procedure powered by the Electronic Tendering System has
been regarded as one of the most important merits embedded in the digital government.
Taiwan government demonstrates the framework of electronic tendering system which in
turn benefit both government bodies and vendors in terms of time and cost barriers (Liao et
al., 2002). This framework is benefit as it simplifies original tendering process where the
tasks of obtaining, submitting and opening tender are done via Internet. Continuation to
this, in December 2002, the Public Construction Commission statistical reports showed that
over 100,000 public agencies have utilized the Electronic Tendering System to upload the
procurement documents and over 200,000 firms have attempted to supply construction
projects, goods, and services by downloading the documents via the Electronic Tendering
System (Chu et al., 2004).
Web-based DSS:A new transform technology
Web-based has been used widely as it plays an important role in distributing information.
Web technology enables the user to access a wide array of information and do transaction
processing services easily at any places. Web is a platform of choice for building DSS.
DSS can be categorized into five different types such as Knowledge Driven, Communication
Driven, Data-Driven, Document Driven and Model-Driven (Noor et al., 2006, Power and
Kaparthi, 2002). In this research, it concentrates on Communication Driven and Modeldriven.
The integration of DSS and Web technology become popular as its gives a lot of
benefit and make it more convenient to the user to access the DSS technology through the
Web environment (Bhargava et al., 2007). DSS is a complex system that helps analyze
decisions or choose between different options. A model-driven DSS places emphasis on
statistical analysis, financial optimization or simulation. These are used by managers and
staff members of a business, or people who interact with the organization, for a number of
purposes depending on how the model is set up such as scheduling, decision analyses and
others. DSS can be deployed via software or hardware in stand-alone personal computers,
client or server systems, or the Web.
Prequalification tendering with Web-based Decision Support System (DSS) is a new
transform technology that attempts to apply from manual tendering processes to electronic
tendering system in order to make the process more efficient and effectives. Due to the
growing interest in the Web, there are many on-going efforts to develop and implement
Web-based DSS in various areas, such as health care, private companies, government, and
education (Bhargava et al., 2007).