Competition Rule Of Multi-Criteria Approach For Construction Projects From Contractors' Perspective

China's construction market is a typical buyer's market,where contractors with variable capability compete fiercely.It troubles the owner to select out the idealest contractor.The crucial purpose of the multi-criteria approach is to evaluate bidders' capability multidimensionally,to determine the most satisfactory and competitive contractor.Bid evaluation rules represent competitive bidding rules for bidders,but also reflect the trading rules between the owner and contractor.So that,which should be reasonable to promote effective competition and fair dealing.The owner makes and runs the game rules as a referee,while the contractor must follow the rules to bid.Competition rules formulated by the owner fully reflect the owner's requirement,however ignoring the contractor's demands.For inevitable cognitive difference and goal incompatibilities between the owner and contractor,comprehension divergence exists,which influences the decision making and behavior of both the owner and contractor.It is difficult to make competition rules accepted by both the owners and contractors,which causes market disorders such as collusion,corruption,unqualified contracts,unreasonable contract price.It is necessary to take contractors' opinions and demands into competition rules,to achieve effective competition among bidders,as well as fair dealing and win-win cooperation between the owner and contractor.Contractors' feedbacks on competition rules help to improve the effectiveness of competitive bidding.Construction projects are classfied as the public project(PU)and the private project(PI)with different characteristics,where difference of competition rules may exist between these two types.This study tries to explore contractors' demands on competition rules of the PU and PI,through collecting contractors' opinion on the importance of each evaluation factor(EF)respectively in the PU and PI.34 EFs,such as bidders' credit rating,construction plan,proposed schedule,bid amount and timely payment to laborers,were identified according to 217 bidding documents in practice and supported by literature review.A questionnaire designed according to the 34 EFs was used to collecte ontractor's opinion.275 questionnaires were returned.Then,key EFs of the PU and PI were identified respectively according to the Pareto rule,and the paired samples T-test was conducted to compare the importance of each EF for the PU and PI.It found that 9 key EFs are shared by the PU and PI,such as construction plan,bidders' credit rating and timely payment to laborers,of which the importance of 5 EFs are different for the PU and PI,and the importance of the other 4 EFs are indifferent.There are 2 key EFs of the PU including bidders' comprehensive capabilities and completeness of bid components,whoes importance are different for the PU and PI.There are 2 key EFs of the PI including schedule assurance + control and bid amount whoes importance are different for the PU and PI.Overall,in the 34 EFs,the importance of 10 EFs are different for the PU and PI,and the importance of the other 24 one are indifferent.Finally,the findings on the key EFs were further analyzed,which proposed reasonable suggestions both for the public and private projects competition rules making.This study collected contractors' feedback on competition rules of the multi-criteria approach,which makes the foundation for the owner to formulate competition rules accepted by the owner and contractor.It would improve the relationship between the owner and contractor and achieve and win-win cooperation via changing the competition rules.On the other hand,key factors identified help contractors to grasp the key point of the public and private projects bidding,which provide approaches for contractors to improve their own competitiveness.