The Hiring of Engineering Services (and certainly others) Using the "Lowest Price" as a Decision Factor is a Grave Mistake
It is simplistic and only defensible in exceptional or case-specific situations.
The arguments for choosing engineering services based on the lowest price are naive, childish, demagogic, or "clever." The lowest price will always be from the one who makes mistakes by underestimating, or from the desperate who "undercut" the price. In both cases, the contractor will be dependent on the goodwill of the oversight. This is halfway to well-known problems.
By opting for the "lowest price," the representatives of the clients think they are avoiding criticism and suspicion, their salaries will come at the end of the month, and the rest can "explode." In reality, they are burying Brazilian engineering.
So that it cannot be said that we are "making things up" (although novelties are not intrinsically wrong, this type of contestation is quite common), back in the years 1975-76-77, there were several engineering tenders with decision criteria using the average price of the bidders. Before calculating the average, the extreme prices were eliminated to avoid distortions or manipulation, and the contract was awarded to the one who came closest to the average. In other words, the decision, which was not manipulable, was made between those who knew what they were proposing. This system worked very well for the public interest and for Brazilian engineering. Unfortunately, this criterion was abandoned. Why?
Among the engineering services, hiring based on the lowest price is even crueler for "Consultancy and Design" services (which account for about 7.5% of the cost of projects). This is the "paperwork" group, where plans and studies are made, and it is determined where and how ports, roads, canals, water and sewage systems, schools, prisons, etc., will be built (or not). And this is very clear because, being a service that precedes the actual construction, how can it be measured, and how can the price be judged?
Brazilian engineering, considered one of the best in the world, has been severely affected by a series of situations that we want and need to see reversed. In a mea culpa, engineers, by submitting to the rules of the game (or being excluded), became accustomed to living in corrupt environments, where one of the maxims is "the good goat doesn't bleat." They ended up disarticulating themselves as citizens or as a group. The professional organizations themselves do not defend them because corporate interests (of institutions where engineers are the minority: the nnnnbrás group) take precedence.
Citizens who choose the honorable and dignified profession of engineering, highly skilled workers, but still workers, are usually extremely practical and logical. How did this happen at the level it is occurring?
We are convinced that it is necessary to identify and correct the causes of the misfortune we are experiencing in the engineering sector, and this is one of the points that needs to be discussed without prejudice.
Choosing based on the lowest price is a "me-deceives-that-I-like-it." There are others. We will return to the topic.
By Miguel Fernández y Fernández, published in Jornal do Brasil, on August 21, 2018.
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