Based on successful international examples of collusion detection, four indicators of the collusion have been chosen and analysed in this paper. The research was done for the majority of tender procedures in the road construction industry, in Poland that was finished in 2016 with the selection of a general contractor. Based on [1, 2, 3] the following four indicators were chosen: the number of offers placed in the tender procedure, the range of bid prices being offered, exactly the same set of offerors in a few tender procedures, repeating ordering the works execution to the same contractor in a given geographical region.
Polish economy experienced significant changes during the past 30 years. System transformation that began in the 1980's and was enhanced by Poland's entry to the European Union in 2004 significantly influenced economic development. Apart from tough history experiences, they formed the shape of national economy which can be observed nowadays. It was a long and difficult process. During political and economic rapid changes greater numbers of price collusions and other illegal practices can be observed than during the stable development of national economy. Authors selected and reviewed the most important anti-competitive cases in the construction industry from the past 30 years in Poland. The review includes not only cases that were officially justified and penalized-like the collusion of portland cement big producers-but also cases of collusion suspicion on highway and express roads that ended with acquittal court verdicts.
Collusion and bid rigging are deplorable practices, forbidden by law. They are harmful to the society and dangerous for a free market economy. Due to the high value of construction industry production and the importance of the time factor, anti-competitive behaviour in that sector can result in losses extremely significant for the national economy. Effective elimination of cartels and bid rigging requires detection, prosecution and successful penalization of cartels. Disrupting already existing cartels and deterring new ones from emerging is efficient only when there is an effective cooperation between the three above mentioned stages. Classification and brief description of numerous existing collusion and bid rigging methods were performed in this paper. As a conclusion, the author presents an idea to combine AI (Artificial Intelligence) and BIM (Building Information Modeling) together as useful tools for early detection of collusion and bid rigging in public tenders.
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