Suitability of fidic contract over the Public Procurement ACT (PPA) 2006 for local public projects in Bangladesh

Abstract

To accommodate and serve the vast amount of population, the government of Bangladesh must undertake a huge number of construction and infrastructure development projects every year. As we know, every construction project is followed by a form of contract so that the participating stakeholders can avoid disputes and the project can be executed accordingly. In 2006, the caretaker government of Bangladesh introduced its first-ever contractual form, which is known as Public Procurement Act (PPA). The maximum number of small to medium public-funded projects is accomplished by this form of contract. However, there are lots of issues that can be identified from this form of contract. Since the PPA authority is apathetic to reviewing and amending it, an alternate option can be marked and identified. Several international standard forms of contracts are very popular worldwide such as FIDIC, JCT, ICE, etc. The FIDIC contract is widely accepted and popular throughout the whole construction world. Hence, this research aims to discover the common issues of PPA and the advantage of FIDIC contract whether it can be used as the alternate option of PPA 2006. A quantitative approach has been adopted for this study. Two objectives were set and after reviewing the relevant works of literature, five key variables were identified for each of them. A set of questionnaires has been developed and validated to achieve the result. Ninety respondents from construction professionals in Bangladesh have participated. The data were analysed using compare means analysis and ANOVA analysis. The result of the first objective revealed several common issues regarding the PPA 2006 such as Applicability, Stakeholder Dissatisfaction, Dispute Management, Delay, and Quality Assurance. For the second objective, there are several advantages of the FIDIC contract identified, which are comfortable Applicability, Stakeholder Acceptance, Dispute Management, Time Management, and Payment Clarification. Since the hypothetical issues that commonly arise in the public funded small to medium size projects due to the PPA contract are proved true, and the FIDIC contract is advantageous at the same point; it can be said that the FIDIC can help to minimise the frequent issues of those projects in Bangladesh.