Interweaving planning procedures for environmental impact assessment for high level infrastructure with public procurement procedures

Abstract

In the traditional setting of a tender procedure on infrastructure in the Netherlands, the procedure starts after the public decision-making procedure has been completed. In recent years, however, the Department of Transport and Water Management has considered advancing the start of the tender procedure in relation to the start of the planning procedure by interweaving both procedures. The possibilities and added values of this market approach have been researched in this paper. Added value has been found in the area of utilisation of knowledge, innovation and creativity of the market, thus gaining time and obtaining a more business-like character of the planning procedure. Solutions are proposed for impediments concerning disclosure versus confidentiality, adapting tender conditions and award criteria, (re)using market party ideas and procedure period.

How Satisfaction Is Achieved in the Implementation Phase of Large Transportation Infrastructure Projects

“…The TUN case was discussed above. For the ENV and CR2 cases, as public planning and procurement were interwoven (Van Valkenburg & Nagelkerke, 2006) and the bidder was selected before the public planning was finished, changes in the public zoning and Route Decision plans may result in a failed procurement and high costs as the bidder was already selected. Hence, there was a big relief when the Council of State declared the public plans irrevocably.…”

Structural development of the tender based land allocation process enables an improved public building development activity

“…It requires skills related to, e.g. economic growth, environmental sustainability and market focus (Van Valkenburg and Nagelkerke 2006;McCrudden 2007;Arrowsmith 2010;Atkinson and Sapat 2012). Careful design and evaluation of the relevant aspects of procurement are crucial for its success.…”

“…A municipality respondent said, "This is something that is useful and further provides an opportunity to push the development in a specific direction", whereas a developer has an approach where "The municipalities can pose whatever requirements they want if these are the conditions for us to buy land and develop our solution". Further, Van Valkenburg and Nagelkerke (2006) and Atkinson and Sapat (2012) discuss that a broader scope including, e.g. environmental impact assessments to create a comprehensive strategy are supported by the possibility to pose specific requests, as with the land allocation process, as beneficial for development.…”

Public procurement of innovation as endogenous–exogenous knowledge conversion

“…What is further interesting is that "potential for product failure is minimized by problem prevention rather than through remediation" (Zsidisin and Smith, 2005, p. 54). Early supplier involvement in the context of public procurement has also been discussed (van Valkenburg and Nagelkerke, 2006). The way the project was designed in the Bio-fuel case gave the procurers the possibility to take such early measures.…”