A RATIONAL APPROACH FOR ASSESSING THE COMPETITIVE BIDDING OF INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS OF INDIAN RAILWAYS

Contract Management plays a vital role in the execution of construction projects for infrastructure creation such as Indian railways (IR). A bird’s eye view of issues in the public procurement practices of IR is given based on a recent audit report on the subject. IR inherited the rich British legacy and due to this historical background, a brief appraisal of public procurement practices and guidelines in UK is given in this paper for a comparative analysis. The focus of this paper is to customize a global trend of multi criteria contract management. A case study of competitive bidding in IR based on multi criteria is discussed. The multi criteria attributes being globally adopted are recommended in Civil Engineering constructions contracts. This is based on a comprehensive analysis of price and non price criteria which was financed by the Swedish Research Council (SRC).