Decision to bid or not to bid: a data envelopment analysis approach

One of the most crucial decisions that is regularly exercised by construction contractors is to determine whether to bid or not to bid on a certain project. The purpose of this paper is to propose a data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach for the bid–no-bid decision. DEA is a robust non-parametric linear programming approach that is used for benchmarking performance and for making selection decisions. Based on a contractor's database of previous considerations of bidding opportunities, DEA creates a “favorable frontier” that consists of favorable bidding opportunities. New bidding opportunities are evaluated in reference to this “favorable frontier” and the bid–no-bid decision is consequently made. The proposed approach incorporates subjective management expertise and deals systematically with bidding situations to guide contractors in their bid–no-bid determination. A major strength of the proposed DEA approach is that it is deployable by organizations facing the bid–no-bid problem regardless of size, country of operation, number and type of factors considered in bidding, or even industry.