Effective pre-qualification systems – Are they essential for minimising delays on road projects?

The most significant and pivotal advance in each construction project is to choose the right contractor which is normally done by a pre-qualification system. Pre-qualification of contractor is a course of gathering data and evaluation that decides the contractor’s capacity as far as considering assets accessible, management processes and execution information. However, the current prequalification system witnesses many limitations such as contractor selection (CS) based on L1 bidder concept which may compromise with time, cost and quality of project; non-usage of a quantified mathematical model or software for selection of most competent contractor might as well compromise the system. The objective of this paper was to highlight the need of strengthening the existing pre-qualification system used in Indian roads and highway projects. To achieve the above stated objective of the research, the project-specific data were collected from 25 different road and highway projects. The analysis of the collected data showed that there was negative impact in terms of time and cost requirements, which was observed in all the projects even if the contractor was selected using the prequalification system. The main reasons identified for the delays and cost overruns were land acquisition issues, suspension of work during monsoon season and maintenance work of bitumen refineries, claims and disputes between contractor and clients, inefficiency of contractors while dealing with scope change, etc.