Client and consultant perspectives of prequalification criteria

A crucial task in contractor prequalification is to establish a set of decision criteria through which the capabilities of contractors are measured and judged. However, in the U.K., there are no nation-wide standards or guidelines governing the selection of decision criteria for contractor prequalification. The decision criteria are usually established by individual clients on an ad-hoc basis. This paper investigates the divergence of decision criteria used by different client and consultant organisations in contractor prequalification; through a large empirical survey conducted in the U.K. The results indicate that there are significant differences in the selection and use of decision criteria for prequalification.