CONSTRUCTION BUSINESS & PROJECT MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE 2022 · Vol. 2022, Issue 1

Challenges encountered by bid evaluators on the selection of contractors in the Nigerian oil and gas engineering, procurement and construction contract bidding

Ogbevire Dsilvia Ejovi and Najimu Saka

Keywords: Bid, bid evaluators, challenges, evaluation, contractors

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the various challenges encountered by bid evaluators in Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract bid evaluation, The reason for the outcome of this study is as a result of improper bid management system in EPC contracts resulting to poor project performance by incompetent contractors which leads to rampant abandonment of EPC projects. A multi - case study design was used for this study, the case study was conducted on professionals such as Architects, Project Engineers and Quantity Surveyors working in selected Oil and Gas institutions in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. The total population that was targeted for this study is one hundred and thirteen(113) professionals (Quantity Surveyors, Architects, Procurement officers and Engineers) who have worked in Chevron, Mobil, Shell, WRPC, and PHRC on Oil and Gas EPC Projects and this was achieved via the census technique .A high return rate of 88.23% was recorded for Architects, while a return rate of 73.91%, 71.42% and 63.15%was recorded for Quantity Surveyors, Procurement officers and Engineers respectively. An overall return rate of approximately 72% was recorded across all four professionals. The limitation of this study indicates that the study is prone to impact limitation, whereby the selected field is conducive to incremental findings due to the fact that enough data was not generated and also lack of previous literature on the study. From the result of this study, it was found that, Inadequate amount of time provided to evaluate tenders at the entry level, and the number of people involved in the evaluation process at the entry level, are the two (2) biggest challenges faced by bid evaluators on EPC Projects, The implication of this study entails inadequate time allotted for bid evaluation to bid evaluators, in which stake holders needs to enable adequate time based on the complexity of the project.