EFFICIENT MANAGEMENT OF TENDERING PROCESSES

KEMPTEN, March 31, 2015. Since last year, the Kempten waste water association has been developing all large-scale construction works using the tendering platform of the Supreme Building Authority of the Bavarian State Interior Ministry for Construction and Transport (vergabe.bayern.de). The e-tendering platform, based on iTWO technologies from RIB software AG, allows the association, based in the administrative district of Swabia, to achieve particularly efficient management of the process as per the requirements of the German construction tendering and contract regulations (VOB) and for Supply and Services (VOL).

Various projects, with a construction volume of around three million Euro, were realized in the year 2014. For 2015, the administrative union is expected to invest 13 million Euro. For the relatively slender waste water association, these projects are simply no longer practicable using the classical paper-based tendering procedure. During intensive research, the association got to grips with the topic of electronic tendering and got to know the iTWO e-tendering public solution by RIB in a course of a VOB seminar.

In 2014, tendering documents with around 500 to 1,000 pages were part of daily life at the Kempten waste water association. And all passed over Franz Beer’s desk. “The fact that the state of Bavaria manages 10,000 to 12,000 tendering processes per year with this technology convinced me,” Beer explains. “Furthermore, the VOB forms on the platform are a great advantage for keeping our tendering documents always up to date,” he adds.

In addition to downloading the tender documents of the association on the platform, the RIB technology offers the possibility of digital bid submission by the bidder companies. In this way, the processes can be further accelerated and the efficiency can be increased. In order not to fundamentally exclude smaller companies in particular, the Wastewater Association Kempten initially also accepts offers submitted in paper form. After all, these are also included in the system with just a few clicks. Evaluation and review of tenders is carried out by the Association by engineering firms, for which appropriate accesses have been set up on the e-procurement platform. 

Even when submitting offers, the trend is clearly towards the Internet. Franz Beer: “The companies gradually recognize the advantages of e-tendering themselves. With the state construction authority's solution and the RIB Software AG technology, we are already prepared as best we can be for directive 2014/24/EU regarding public contract tendering. We assume that 2016 will be able to show a high rate of digital submissions.”