Assessment of Tender Bids
Tendered price, works experience and financial standing are essential for selection of a prospective contractor. A comparison summary with analysis of all the tenders should be well presented for assessment purpose. There is always a clause in the tender documents to remind the tenderers that the client does not undertake to accept the lowest or any tender. However in case a tender other than the lowest is recommended, full explanation must be recorded to clarify others’ query. In fact, the client and its engineer may not have to know precisely how the tenderers build up their tender price. Nevertheless if some BQ items are found that bear an exceptionally higher or lower quoted rate than the estimate , careful examination should be conducted to explore whether there are mistakes or errors had been made by the tenderer ; or otherwise these mistakes or errors in fact exist in the contract documents .
Tender Additional Appendices
During the tendering period, the client and its engineer will take time to go through again the contract documents and carefully examine whether there are omissions or mistakes exist. In case omissions
or mistakes are discovered, the client’s engineer will inform all the tenderers at the same time before the tender is closed. In case there are minor change of design and updating of works details, the client’s engineer will inform all the tenderers by means of letters and these letters will be kept as appendices in the tender documents.
Feasibility Study
A project often requires large expenditure by the client. When the project design is determined, a feasibility study will be conducted at an early stage to assess whether the proposed project is practicable, advantageous and will be accepted by the public and end users in both aspects of engineering and commercial. The report will include, but not limited to, the cost of land, the expected income (or a return of some kind), the running cost, the adverse effects to the third party and adjacent structures, and the impacts on town planning and environmental protection as well.
Site Investigation
When the project development is decided to proceed, site investigation will be carried out by some specialist firm(s) to determine the ground / soil Conditions to ascertain the suitability of the proposed site for the proposed building or civil engineering project in view of planning .Recently, for the sake of saving the initial cost or the urgency of the project, some clients are not willing to spend too much money or time on this topic, and this practice is wrong. Experience tells that an absence of site investigation or a non-comprehensive site investigation report will most likely trigger out the following adverse effects and in turn results unforeseen.
Expenditure: –
a) Leads to an incomplete engineering design
b) Subsequently leads to a wrongly estimated project cost
c) Subsequently leads to an insufficiently prepared Bills of Quantities
d) Subsequently leads to an inadequate method statement
e) Subsequently leads to a delayed completion date
f) Leads to subsequent claims and prolongation cost
g) Eventually results a higher completion cost than the budget
Engineering Design
When the site investigation is finished, a report with layout drawings, boreholes logs, soil samples, laboratory test results together with the specialist’s interpretation will be produced for the engineer / architect’s reference to proceed with the design and specifications for the foundation.
The foundation design will include the earthworks (the balance of cut and fill, re-use of suitable material, disposal of unsuitable material and the respective replacement) , piling work , diaphragm walls and underground waterproofing work .
The designs of substructures and superstructures
will also be carried out and substantiated by engineering analysis of each structural member and are converted and put into drawings. In this planning stage, the engineer will consider the various alternatives to achieve the requirements of the project in order to save cost and time.
Further designs of drainage work, utilities work, roadwork, external work, E & M works, building services, building finishes and landscaping work will be followed up and accomplished to form the set of engineering drawings after consideration of alternative solutions to meet the constructional and financial requirements.