The purpose of this study is to suggest positive and prescriptive guidelines for implementation of "Grading Scheme" as one of the efficient ways of pre-qualification of contractors In the process of government construction project contracts, In the a...
The purpose of this study is to suggest positive and prescriptive guidelines for implementation of "Grading Scheme" as one of the efficient ways of pre-qualification of contractors In the process of government construction project contracts, In the amendment of The Law of Public Contract in 1996, A Qualified Contractors Listing System has been formally introduced, which may be enlarged to the more general "Grading Scheme" of contractors. With such a new scheme of pre-qualification of bidders, the government ordering agencies are to arrange and operate their unique grading system, yet, the agencies such as The Office of Government Procurement has not been installed the system. In this regard, this study has been conducted to show how the grading scheme can be modified as a refined PQ system for the various ordering agencies. The current PQ system in the government contract was formally implemented in 1993. The Law of Public Contract rules that the client (government agency) may carry the PQ examination for the contracts of 22 types of work including highway, bridge, tunnel, railroad, subway, airport, seaport, dam, stadium, water and sewage system, etc. of which estimated contract amount exceeds 10 billion Won. The Ministry of Finance and Economy (MFE) rules the evaluation factors and weight of those factors in PQ examination. In such an institutional scheme, various imperfections and problems are imposed. First of all, the Korean contractors, especially mid and small size companies complain that there are carried unnecessary PQ cases Also, since the evaluation method in PQ adopts more rigidly quantified indicators than qualifled ones, the reliability and discrimination power of PQ examination are often in dispute. And in the process of actual process of carrying out the PQ examination, there observed some procedural problems such as inconveniences in documents attachment, imperfections in certifying mechanism of contractors statements, and so on. Grading scheme can be efficiently used to supplement the inflexible PQ system. Contractor grading system or similar one is adopted in many countries like Great Britain, Japan, China, the Philippines, etc. The core of this system is to list up qualified contractors through aperiodical evaluation process and to keep a classification of contractors according to their level of qualification results. Applying such a system, government agencies as clients could save time and cost for pre-qualification to a significant level. Parallel with the contractors grading system, the project base PQ should be sustained for the large size and high technology type of work. Also, the current institutional scheme of PQ system should allow more autonomy of government contract agencies working in the line of actual practice. Many experts and practitioners in those agencies need to modify the given scheme according to the characteristics of the agency and to the pecurialities of the contract in order to perform more qualified PQ examination. With a proper implementation of grading scheme, each ordering agency is able to make up more suitable PQ system. This study suggests three different scenarios of implementing grading scheme according to the different situation of ordering agencies First, in case of government agencies with small amount of construction contracts such as small municipal governments, this study suggests the simplest way of sustaining a list of qualified contractors by applying the result of "Contractors Evaluation Bulletin" updated every year by the Ministry of Construction and Transportation. Those agencies may add some other evaluating factors such as contractor's contract history with the ordering agency in the grading scheme. Second, in case of agencies which is specialized in a specific construction field such as Korea National Housing Corporation, Korea Electricity Corporation, etc., this study suggest for them to keep more specific listing and grading of contractors according to the type of works. Since those agencies has kept a long and well-refined history of contracts, they would have set up a unique criteria of evaluating contractors. Third, in case of a comprehensive ordering agencies such as The Office of Government Procurement, this study suggest to arrange various methods of grading with various type and scale of works. In particular, grading scheme in such a case can be applied to the modification of Contractors Evaluation Bulletin system.