Framework for Performance-Based Contractor Prequalification

Performance-based contractor prequalification goes beyond the financial prequalification provided by the surety industry when it issues a bond for a public transportation project to include a contractor's performance record in the prequalification process. This paper reports the results of a survey of the status of performance-based contractor prequalification from 41 U.S. state departments of transportation (DOTs) and seven Canadian provincial ministries of transportation. These results were correlated with a content analysis of 43 DOT administrative prequalification documents and 62 sets of project-specific, performance-based prequalification documents. The findings were validated through structured interviews with contractors. The study found that performance-based contractor prequalification can be portrayed as a three-tiered system. The first tier mirrors the current administrative prequalification systems. The second tier is performance-based and includes postproject contractor evaluations, and the final tier consists of project-specific prequalification. This system constitutes a framework from which a transportation agency can design a contractor prequalification system that directly rewards good performers and encourages poor performers to improve. These features of the system are accomplished by adjusting, on the basis of a given contractor's past performance, its bidding capacity and the amount of performance bond that it is required to provide.