Measuring the efficient management of public works contracts: A non-parametric approach

Abstract

The efficiency of execution of public works contracts is usually defined in terms of the capacity to complete works within the costs and the time agreed on in the contract. Therefore, it has been traditionally measured considering either costs overruns or delays. Our purpose is to consider both measures simultaneously, so as to develop a measure of overall efficiency of public works contracts execution. We compute this measure, through a benchmark procedure, using a non-parametric approach (DEA -Data Envelopment Analysis). The analysis is carried out employing a detailed data set of Italian public contracts for roads and highways, in the period 2000-2005.

Does corruption and the institutional characteristics of the contracting authorities affect the execution of healthcare infrastructures?

“…The literature on public procurement includes several empirical studies that define the notion of efficiency in the execution of public works contracts in terms of either cost or time overruns. These, however, consider the two problems separately, being thus unable to assess conclusively the relative capacity of the procurer to achieve both contractual targets simultaneously (Guccio et al, 2012b;Anacarani et al, 2016). In this respect, a benchmarking analysis should be conducted to assess the relative performance of contracting authorities in achieving both contractual time and costs targets (Guccio et al, 2012b).…”

“…In line with previous literature (Guccio et al, 2012b), in this study, we opt for an inputoriented DEA model. As an example, consider n public work contracts to be evaluated; a DEA input-oriented efficiency score u i is calculated for each public work contract solving the following program, for i = 1, .…”

Benchmarking Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) Power Plant Projects by Means of Series Two-Stage DEA

“…There are a few empirical studies on the relative efficiency of construction projects using DEA. This literature includes the works [11,[13][14][15][26][27][28][29].…”

“…Papadimitriou [27] uses single DEA to evaluate the efficiency of the EPCOM cycle of power plant projects. Guccio et al [29] use DEA to measure the efficient management of public works contracts that concern interventions for roads and highways. Tsolas [15] employs range-adjusted measure (RAM) to derive composite performance indicators for a sample of building projects in Oregon.…”

Journalists and the intermediation of open data

“…This methodology calculates an efficiency frontier for a set of units using different inputs and outputs, and then gives an efficiency score (it considers efficiency as the lowest input amount to produce one unit of output). Guccio et al (2012) used this method to investigate the performance of Italian public contracts in terms of time of completion of works and cost overruns.…”