Insights on the Performance of Public Procurement for Water Utilities Works

The availability of non-reimbursable funds for water supply networks has made the public procurement of construction work in this sector of particular interest in terms of performance. The purpose of this research is to identify key issues and patterns emerging from the engagement between Romanian contracting entities awarding such construction contracts and economic operators. The engagement is materialized through rounds of clarification requests during the offer preparation stage. Following the analysis of the specialized literature, it was found that the subject was not addressed in many scientific publications. The research undertaken was an empirical analysis of selected tenders. The research methodology focuses on the qualitative analysis of publicly available questions and responses, complemented by the analysis of numerical data relating to the same tenders. From the study, it results that a high percentage of all questions analyzed target the technical requirements of the contract notice documents. In some instances, the same questions are found in multiple tenders. Tender evaluation periods are lengthy. The tenders are published with a similar strategic profile (e.g., open tendering, no division into lots) and participation is dominated by bidder associations of multiple economic operators. This study concludes that the quality of the technical requirements does not support the type of strategic profile employed by the contracting entities. The rigidity of written communication makes it unsuitable to mitigate the negative effects of a flawed approach in developing technical requirements for high value, high complexity projects directly connected with Romania’s public water supply challenges.