A Computerised Approach to Bidding Strategy in Civil Engineering

Abstract

This investigation was concerned with the study of the various aspects of the theory of bidding strategy. This study was conducted using two methods. The first method is that of analysing actual bidding data by attempting to fit known statistical distributions to them. However, the amount of bidding data available was not enough to draw general conclusions and an alternative method was sought. The second method is that of computerised simulation using pseudo-random numbers to sample from theoretical distributions. A sub-routine to generate pseudo-random numbers was developed and tested. The influence of important parameters like the number of competitors, the estimation accuracy, the applied mark up and the effect of the job value were studied. A study of the break even mark up was also conducted. The simulation results obtained compare very well with those available in the published literature. A complete listing of all the computer programs developed is presented together with their flow charts.