Construction site design assessment in the most cost-effective bid

In construction processes, the choice of a contractor by a public or private Contracting Authority is a crucial moment. Today, to improve the probabilities of success to respect time, cost and quality, Clients resort with greater frequency to contracts award through ???most cost-effective bids??? (MCEB), which allow a more detailed technical and economic evaluation of the offers. Among the qualitative elements included in the calls, listed as example in the art. 83 of Legislative Decree n. 163/2006, there are not issues related to the construction site design of an intervention, such as safety, the construction site environmental impact, the use of advanced building technologies and the site organization. However, some Contracting Authorities have tried to include some of these elements between the evaluation criteria in the calls for bids (with scores of about 20 to 40 points out of 100), in order to assess the capabilities of production organization of tenderers, especially for interventions particularly complex as regards to the construction site. Therefore, the research investigated the phenomenology of the MCEB calls - through a detailed analysis of several calls ??? identifying, within the specifications, the qualitative aspects, their related weights and the evaluation criteria associated to the construction site aspects. The study has revealed a certain vagueness in the definition of the these criteria, resulting in the inability to effectively and objectively evaluate the technical and organizational potentialities of tenderers. Since the lack of criteria evaluable in objective terms means both a lower transparency of candidates assessment and a greater likelihood of appeals - with consequent costs for the Contracting Authorities and extension of time for the completion of the intervention ??? the research proposes, as a result, a repertoire of evaluation criteria oriented to a better objectivity, related to the construction site design of the execution phase. The contract award based on a construction project, preset and calibrated on the actual production means and the real organizational capacities of the contracting company, gives greater certainties to the management order and, ultimately, and gives less likely to encounter criticalities during the construction phase, increasing quality levels of works and workers safety.