UK civil engineering firms are calling for "more streamlined approaches" in the way they procure tenders from clients.

The Civil Engineering Contractors Association (CECA) has worked alongside its members to look at issues contributing towards the higher costs of procurement, which have been attributed to the growing use of open tenders.

Overall, nine key areas have been highlighted as being flawed. They are:

• Excessive quality bid requests

• Poor engagement with bidders

• Too many bidders/use of open tenders

• Poor tender documents

• Frameworks that deliver less than forecasted revenue

• Poor management of the procurement process

• Secondary competition in frameworks


• Quality of post tender feedback

• Lack of enforcement of tender commitments.

The CECA is now calling for open tenders to only be used where they are the most effective way of engaging suppliers.

Head of External Affairs, Marie-Claude Hemming, said: "The way in which infrastructure is procured in the UK is in crisis with the costs of bidding for work challenging for the construction industry as a whole.

"Our research has found that the cost of tendering for a project is a significant proportion of any potential profit arising from its successful completion. This is not sustainable, and the problem made worse when you consider a contractor has an average win rate of 1:4.

"To this end, we have worked closely with our membership to address the challenges faced, and we want to work with our customers to flush out the costs associated with this bureaucracy, helping to support better outcomes for everyone."

She added: "While there may be a case for open tendering in some circumstances, we want to ensure that the costs and potential pitfalls of this approach are well known prior to any decision by a customer to use this route to procure infrastructure."

The findings of the full report will be published at CECA's 20th anniversary conference later this month.

(LM/JP)