Improvements that may address some of the current inefficiencies in the procurement process include:
• consistency of general project documentation in relation to form and structure of both the EOI and RFP, particularly in terms of information required to be submitted is of a general nature and not project specific;
• further development of the standard commercial principles to standardised contractual documentation for non-project specific issues and, potentially, sector specific contractual documentation (to facilitate reduced legal costs by enabling documents to be compared easily, and reduced negation time due to standard acceptable sector-specific contractual positions);
• provision of highly skilled Government practitioners with a clear governance structure that enables effective and timely decision-making, (to facilitate the prevention of unnecessary delays in the procurement processes);
• implementation of an information rationalisation process to ensure that information requested for each project is only that required to evaluate the current project (not simply a build up of requirements included in previous projects);
• providing greater transparency of Government's requirements in respect of the reference project and public sector comparator (PSC);
• implementing a phased approach to the receipt of detailed technical information (such as costly services layout drawings) during the course of the procurement process (thus requiring the right level of detailed design development for each phase of the bid process (i.e. information not required for the purposes of evaluation but required as a pre condition to contractual close to ensure certainty of product delivered at commercial acceptance);
• consideration of the staged receipt of information throughout the bid phase allowing, for example, the commencement of technical evaluation prior to receipt of the final financing proposals;
• undertaking due diligence and procuring condition assessment reports particularly in relation to large linear type infrastructure projects, following receipt of bidders' input into the scope of investigation works to be undertaken;
• limiting the information required for a rebid to only the changed elements of the bid (as opposed to requesting a full resubmission of the bid) and ensuring the process is conducted within efficient timeframes); and
• provision of clear guidelines in respect of discretionary elements of projects (such as associated commercial development) within the project brief, indicating what will or won't be acceptable as well as ensuring ongoing feedback as to general acceptability throughout the bid process.