How The Quality Of Pre-procurement Research Affects The Goods Procurement Performance

The World Bank financed Yunnan Highway Asset Management Project focuses on managing highway as assets.The project consists of four main contents: construction of an integrated information system,strengthening maintenance and emergency response capacity,piloting "three-new" maintenance technologies,and improving institutional capacity.The project’s implementation and performance achievement are carried out through a series of project-related bidding and procurement activities,and the procurement performance directly affects the project’s overall performance.Therefore,bidding and procurement activities occupy a pivotal position in all WB financed projects,have become an essential part of WB project management,and have received more attention from the WB and project implementation unit during the preparation and implementation of projects.From the tenderee’s perspective,the author conducts participant observati on,adopts a qualitative narrative research method and takes the case of the WB financed Yunnan Highway Asset Management Project as the background to deeply restore the bidding and procurement process of two goods contract packages.By illustrating the relationship between the pre-procurement survey and the quality,efficiency,and economy of goods procurement,people can have a more comprehensive and clear interpretative understanding on goods procurement behavior and its meaning.Firstly,the paper adopts a literature review to introduce the current research on goods procurement performance in foreign and domestic financed projects.Then,using case studies to restore the origin,progress,and maturation of pre-procurement survey in the bidding and procurement of two goods contract packages,namely,small milling machine and skid steer loader.And finally,analyzing and summarizing how pre-procurement survey affects goods procurement performance by inductive reasoning.The study shows that: strengthening the width and depth of pre-procurement survey,improving the quality of the survey,consolidating the basic information conforming to the procurement guidelines and the procurement purpose,preparing high-quality bidding documents,and transmitting the information through high-quality bidding documents more effectively can enable bid evaluation experts having a good understanding on the differences between the WB’s procurement policies and domestic laws and regulations,and applying the post-qualification lowest price bid evaluated method to improve the procurement quality,efficiency,and economy indicators in the goods procurement performance for WB projects.Based on the case study,the second half of the paper further summarizes the experience of achieving better procurement performance by insisting on the pre-procurement survey and ensuring the quality of the survey.Meanwhile,it introduces the work content,research order,and precautions of the pre-procurement survey.The discussion of how the quality of pre-procurement survey affects the goods procurement performance can draw the attention of peer managers,World Bank procurement experts,and foreign financed project managers on the importance of moving the concentration of the bidding and procurement management forward.And it is expected to provide some reference and guidance for the subsequent goods procurement under this project,other WB or foreign financed projects,and even domestic or government projects.