The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport announced on the 17th that it will implement enforcement rules for the construction technology promotion law to relieve the bidding burden on companies participating in construction engineering projects starting from the 18th, while revising and implementing the comprehensive evaluation bidding system criteria to enhance fairness and professionalism in large projects starting on June 20.
The criteria amount for the qualification evaluation system, which selects construction engineering firms in public construction such as design and construction project management, will be raised. The qualification evaluation system consists of project performance capability evaluation (PQ), statement of qualifications (SOQ), and technical proposal (TP).
With this system improvement, the application criteria amount for evaluating the professional capability of participating companies through the statement of qualifications (SOQ) and technical proposal (TP) evaluation will be raised starting from the 18th. Since the introduction of the system in 1997, the criteria amount was raised once in 2013, but it has not kept pace with inflation (such as labor costs) and the trend of larger orders, leading to significant administrative burdens for companies despite the projects being subject to medium and small-scale technical evaluations (SOQ), with evaluations being conducted through technical proposals (TP) instead. This limitation has been pointed out due to the limited effectiveness of enhancing technical differentiability.
In addition, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport has been promoting innovation from the formation of the evaluation committee to the overall operation of the review (specialized inquiries from the ordering agency, restrictions on participation in evaluations, retrospective evaluations, etc.) to enhance fairness and professionalism in the comprehensive evaluation bidding system. The revised criteria for the comprehensive evaluation bidding system were prepared through gathering opinions from ordering agencies and related organizations, hackathons (1 night and 2 days), and listening to various opinions from participating companies since last year.
Through this revision, in the evaluation criteria and scoring criteria of the comprehensive evaluation bidding system, items for which objective performance verification is possible will be converted to quantitative indicators, and the scoring for in-depth interviews with technical personnel will be enhanced to strengthen the technical differentiability of the companies.
Additionally, to ensure that specialized evaluations can be conducted according to the characteristics of the projects, the evaluation criteria for design and construction project management have been differentiated. To promote the spread of smart construction technologies, such as Building Information Modeling (BIM), which are highly utilized on-site, new evaluation items have been established, and the criteria have been strengthened to allow the selection of companies with technical capabilities.
Kim Tae-byeong, the director of technology safety policy at the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, stated, "While alleviating the burden on the industry, which is facing difficulties through the amendment of the qualification evaluation system, we will improve the system and conduct continuous follow-up management to ensure that the comprehensive evaluation bidding system operates according to its original intent, allowing capable companies to win projects through fair evaluations. To restore public trust in the construction industry, it is essential for the evaluation committee, bidding companies, and ordering agencies to work together to establish a sound bidding culture."