The use of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in the evaluation of design and build road contractor’s bids: a case of UNRA

Abstract

Contractors and Stakeholders during a workshop organized by Uganda National Association of Building and Civil Engineering Contractors (UNABCEC) in 2008 recommended that the Public Procurement and Disposal of Assets Authority (PPDA) use value engineering in tender evaluations and that those involved be trained in order to avoid “lowest price” as the basis for award of contract. Although this study only focused on UNRA, the deliberations can be extended to both governments and the private sector in areas of choice making, prioritization/evaluations and other areas where decision making is required. What most institutions in Uganda do is to rely on award of points based on personal judgements without any way to check for consistency by the experts or members of the evaluation committee hence a possibility of subjectivity. Currently, there are two methods for evaluating design and build road projects, the Technical Compliance Selection (TCS) and Quality Cost Based Selection methodologies (QCBS). Delays usually come as a result of court proceedings when dissatisfied bidders go to court which takes long therefore halting procurement of such works. The use of AHP tool in the evaluation process will instill confidence in the participants given that it is computerized and since it emphasizes on most economic bid other than lowest bid. In this study, data was collected using both primary and secondary data sources. It was established by the time of this study that Uganda National Roads Authority (UNRA) had not yet come up with a list of distinct criteria for selecting design and build road contractors since the various tenders had varying criteria because different consultants were involved in the designing of the Terms of Reference (TOR). For the second specific objective structuring the hierarchy, there were four levels the main goal of selecting design and build contractor, criteria, sub-criteria and the alternatives. For the third specific objective evaluation and ranking of the sub criteria were also done. Criteria 2, “structures” which include the foundation, substructures, and superstructures ranked best with 23% whereas “understanding of the design” scope ranked second with 19.8%. The criterion that gave the least benefit is Criteria 7 and 9 that is Health & Safety and Environment Protection & Social-Economic and Consideration and Minimum Staff Requirements with 6.5%. The best contractor was contractor 5 with 16.1% priority weight and the last was contractor 1 with 10.6% weight. Case two had all the criteria with the same priority weights of 20% and the best as contractor 3 with the priority weight of 33.3% and the worst contractor 5 with priority weight of 7.4% weight. Generally, the study demonstrated that AHP can be used to evaluate tenders and the author recommends that it should be adopted by UNRA.