Uncertainty Factors affecting Bid Price from Pre-bid Clarification Document of Transport Construction Projects

Civil projects are associated with many uncertainties because they involve a long duration, many resources, a large area, and many supply chains. Therefore, the price of a civil project is not simply proportional to the quantity and unit price of the item but has a variable value, including uncertainty risk. This study investigates the influence of the uncertainty factors in the pre-bid clarification document on bid price formation during the project bidding phase. To this end, civil projects from the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) were used as research data. This study randomly selected fifty sample data from each of twelve counties from 2008-to 2020: six hundred. The authors observed that each project sample had 0 to n query cases due to uncertainty. Then, this study examined the project uncertainty cases and categorized them into the following four uncertainty factors: 'conflict' (UF1), 'impossibility' (UF2), 'lack' (UF3), and 'missing' (UF4). Under the extracting process, the cases are classified into four uncertainty factors. With the project not containing any uncertainty factors as a control group, the project containing these uncertainty factors was designated as an experimental group. After comparing the bidder's price, the experimental group's bid price was higher than the control group's. This result suggests that uncertainty factors in bid documents induce bidders to set a high bid price as a defense against uncertainty.