Public Procurement Law in Turkey

The Effect of Current Public Procurement Law on Duration and Cost of Construction Projects in Turkey

“…With the previous law, it was generally acknowledged that public construction investments caused significant waste of public resources because they took a longer time and costed more than expected. As stated by various authors (Gönen, Işık 1997;Gören 1998;Abacıoğlu 1999;Paydak 2002;Öcal et al 2006), the duration and cost increases in construction projects that were carried out by Law No. 2886 originated from several factors, such as: (1) insufficient detail in the preparation of the contracts and supplements; (2) incompleteness of contractor selection methods (e.g., lack of a detailed price analysis because the old law used unit price methods as the tender procedure); (3) lack of the application of management functions (i.e., planning, organization, coordination, command, and control) from the beginning to the end of the work due to various reasons; (4) low values of production productivity due to various reasons; and (5) external factors such as negative market conditions and price changes.…”

“…2886 originated from several factors, such as: (1) insufficient detail in the preparation of the contracts and supplements; (2) incompleteness of contractor selection methods (e.g., lack of a detailed price analysis because the old law used unit price methods as the tender procedure); (3) lack of the application of management functions (i.e., planning, organization, coordination, command, and control) from the beginning to the end of the work due to various reasons; (4) low values of production productivity due to various reasons; and (5) external factors such as negative market conditions and price changes. The current procurement system has provided significant improvements in these areas (Paydak 2002;Arslan 2002;Gencer 2003;Gök 2003;Öcal et al 2006). For example, the former procurement law allowed tendering with estimated costs (first estimated cost) without preparing detailed designs (i.e., the bidders had the right to execute projects with a cost discount, resulting in an increase in quantities and quality of work during the construction phase).…”

“…Despite this positive outlook, various authors have stated that duration and cost increases have occurred rarely in construction pro-jects under Law No. 4734 due to failure in the application of management functions during the implementation of the work and to various external factors (Paydak 2002;Öcal et al 2006).…”