Conventional Bidding System and a New Proposed Online Bidding Technology on the Construction Sector in Ethiopia; Comparative Approach

Abstract

Ethiopia is one of the developing countries in the world, and for this development the construction industry is playing a big role. Bidding issues are widely related to the construction industry and its participants so that striving to improve the bidding procedure of construction is in the best interest of both the public and the construction industry, in particular. In today’s construction environment, the vast majority of bidding activity happens in the traditional error prone paper based submission and evaluation process. Therefore, construction sector owners are finding themselves under increasing pressure to participate in most contracts because of the accessibility and efficiency of the current bidding system. In response to these pressures, the Ethiopian construction industry should come up with alternative bidding and procurement methods which are very accessible, efficient and time saving. The aim of this study was to propose a web based online-bidding application on the construction sector and develop the application with the help of a software engineer, to compare it with the current conventional bidding system weather it minimize the above mentioned problems and standardizes our bidding system. A comparative approach of research design was carried out based on questionnaire survey, interview survey and an intense review of literature to meet the aim of this study. And the relevant parts of the conventional construction bidding process were summarized and coded by using basic hypertext processor programing language to develop a new online bidding technology for the construction sector in Ethiopia. As a result the study investigated the drawbacks of the conventional construction bidding system in our country Ethiopia, and introduced a new online bidding web application prototype which minimizes the assessed drawbacks of the conventional bidding system. Based on the discussed results it was concluded that, the online bidding system is the best choice compared to the conventional bidding system, to perform time efficient, cost efficient, accessible and standardized bid submission and evaluation in the construction industry. Furthermore, it is recommended that; the program should be further developed, the government should strictly consider making this suggested web-based online bidding application as a default construction biding system, the application should be well advertised and its patent should be secured, and a training manual should be prepared on how to use the application.