The Construction Industry in China: Its Bidding System and Use of Performance Information

11 May The Construction Industry in China: Its Bidding System and Use of Performance Information

By Wenjuan Zhang, Dongping Cao, Guangbin Wang

June 2008

Abstract
This paper describes the rapid development of China’s construction industry and especially its bidding system. After summarily depicting the history, scope, employees and contractors in China’s construction industry, the paper identifies that even after nearly thirty years’ development, the sector is still harassed by the problems of low productivity, unskilled employees, unsophisticated technologies, inadequate legal framework and flawed mechanism. This paper also points out that the status quo of performance information in China’s construction industry still leaves much to be desired, and that in order to merge into the global market, China has made much effort to introduce the competitive bidding mechanism and the method of evaluated lowest bidding price to the industry. Via picturing the course of using the method of evaluated lowest bidding price in China’s construction industry, the paper also characters why and how the performance information is used in the sector. At the end of the paper, it is pointed out that although some certain district has made some efforts to use performance information, most Chinese scholars and government officials are still convinced that the method of evaluated lowest bidding price does accord with the market-oriented trend and should certainly be widely adopted in the future.