POTENTIAL FACTORS AFFECTING E-TENDERING APPLICABILITY FOR THE PROCUREMENT OF ETHIOPIAN FEDERAL ROAD CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS
Author/s
Hilina Belachew, Denamo Addissie
Abstract
Bidding practice which is one of the steps in procurement is identified as one of the major short coming of the Ethiopian construction industry. The fact that the current Ethiopian construction tendering practice is paper-based has a number of drawbacks like human errors in document production, poor audit trail, access problems, security concerns, insufficient copies, and timeconsuming being the major ones. A number of studies shows that the challenges of a paperbased tendering can be improved via e-tendering implementation. This paper presents the result of a literature survey, interview, and questionnaire survey conducted to identify the various factors affecting e-tendering applicability in Ethiopian road construction projects. It identified a number of relevant variables under Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and barriers, and presents a model for future research studies. First, the perception and experience of tendering professionals involved in Ethiopian road construction projects was assessed via questionnaire and interview survey. Selected e-tendering practitioners from Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) were also interviewed on their experience while implementing the system. Accordingly, the result showed that reliability of information communication & technology, top management support & employee commitment, reliability of users‟ acceptance, reliability of legal factors, and reliability of monitoring & evaluation system would positively affect e-tendering implementation and the same were considered as a CSF. Similarly, a number of factors related to management, organization, environment, and technology may hinder the implementation of the system, hence taken as a barrier to e-tendering implementation.