A group-AHP-based approach for selecting the best public tender

This paper focuses on the selection of the best tender in a public procurement process. This process involves different steps: the design of the tender process, the choice of tender selection methods, and scoring rules for evaluating tenders—the ex post control. Due to the interconnections between the rules on public contracts and those aimed to tackle corruption, the choice of tender selection methods and scoring rules for evaluating tenders assumes a crucial importance. The criterion usually used to select the best tender is the most economic advantageous tender (MEAT) based on the evaluation of technical requirements, on the one hand, and economic offer, on the other hand. First, this paper highlights some critical issues on the weighted sum method and some analytical formulas, commonly used to calculate the MEAT. Then, in order to apply a unique procedure and limit some risks of corruption and collusive agreements, it proposes to implement a unified group-AHP approach: In particular, a group-AHP model is applied for analyzing the qualitative component and another AHP model is used for the quantitative component.