"Reducing Burden, Enhancing Competitiveness" Public Procurement Service Improves Large Construction Bidding

Measures to improve technical bidding, aimed at reducing the burden on the large-scale construction bidding industry and strengthening technological competition, will be implemented.

On the 14th, the Public Procurement Service announced that it will implement comprehensive improvement measures that overhaul the bidding and awarding system, execution procedures, and methods of technical bidding to support the smooth progress of large construction projects.

Technical bidding is a bidding method in which the contractor participates from the design stage, directly designs or modifies and supplements existing designs, and also carries out construction. This method is mainly applied to complex projects worth 30 billion KRW or more.

The improvement measures are characterized by selecting six tasks that are highly demanded on-site and reflecting improvements accordingly.

First, the Public Procurement Service will prepare a standard bidding guide for technical bidding projects to support fair and rational bidding. The standard bidding guide, which improves unreasonable bidding conditions (such as construction cost burdens) and toxic clauses that were pointed out as major causes of bid failures, will be applied first to customized service projects and made available for use by other ordering agencies.

The measures also include expanding the preparation period for companies by holding pre-disclosure briefings and pre-disclosing key bidding information, as well as improving unreasonable bidding conditions through prior feedback.

The scope of proposals in the detailed design technical proposal bidding will also be expanded through the improvement measures. Previously, changes to government-supplied materials were prohibited in detailed design technical proposal bidding, which generally limited the content and scope of technical proposals. However, from the second half of this year, changes in the quantity and amount of government-supplied materials will be allowed, and technical proposals can be freely made within the overall construction budget, according to the Public Procurement Service.

Evaluation items by representative building types used in the evaluation of technical proposals will be reorganized to enhance the design review process. Considering the unique characteristics of buildings, detailed evaluation items such as security, future expandability, and post-use will be flexibly operated. At the same time, documents that are mainly for reference among submitted materials will be accepted as electronic files to enable efficient operation of the design review.

Additionally, the Public Procurement Service will respond to bid failures in technical bidding subject to the Local Contract Act by acting as an agent for negotiated contracts when switching to such contracts. It will also provide a pre-review service for technical bidding contract methods, shortening the period from procurement request to announcement, thereby supporting the rapid project implementation of demand agencies.

Lim Gi-geun, Administrator of the Public Procurement Service, said, “This measure was prepared to broadly collect and understand the voices of the construction industry and demand agencies and to identify and improve problems that are likely to occur on-site.” He added, “The Public Procurement Service will continue to listen to on-site voices and pursue institutional improvements to ensure that large national projects proceed without disruption.”