Social Sustainability in Delivery and Procurement of Public Construction Contracts

Abstract

Boosting sustainability in public construction procurement implies new challenges associated with incentivizing integrated approaches and the inclusion of sustainability criteria in tendering procedures. Thus, the choice of project-delivery method and procurement procedure is a key decision to ensure project success for sustainable outcomes. This study focused on the social dimension of sustainability and analyzed 451 tendering documents from 10 countries to assess the influence of procurement procedures and delivery methods on the inclusion of social criteria in public construction procurement. Content analysis, descriptive statistics, and logistic regression were applied. The results show the international trends in delivery methods and procurement procedures. Country and contract size were found to be the most influential variables for the inclusion of social criteria in tendering procedures. There were no significant differences between project-delivery methods and between procurement procedures with respect to the inclusion of social criteria. However, criteria associated with employment and cultural heritage were mainly considered in traditional delivery methods, whereas professional ethics and cultural heritage were associated with the lowest price procurement procedures. Finally, subjective methods were predominantly used to assess social sustainability.