The Public Procurement Office of the BUT Rectorate and the Institute of Building Economics and the Management of the Faculty of Civil Engineering organized a two-day training course in March, focusing on the innovative method of awarding contracts and managing the project in general – the Best Value Approach. This method has been developed in the US more than 20 years ago, and has been in the recent years of great interest in the Netherlands and Norway. Gradually, this method is also attempted to implement the Brno University of Technology.

The Best Value Approach (BVA) method is based on a completely different concept of procurement and project management in general. It is based on the assumption that the subject of the contract is best understood by the contractor-expert who executes the orders of the given type for a long time, not the contracting authority, who sometimes orders certain contracts once during its existence. “The BVA method leads the contracting authority to focus on defining the expected result, the goal, not the way the goal is to be achieved when choosing a supplier. This will enable high-quality suppliers to compete against competitors, “said Petr Jelinek, head of the Public Procurement Department at BUT.

The method is generally applicable to all types of contracts, but the most advantageous is especially for service contracts and construction contracts, which include design-and-build design. “At the department, we try to gradually apply the method to smaller construction orders, and we are also preparing an over-the-limit clean-up service contract that we would like to use BVA more,” Jelinek added. Thanks to the new method, vendors could get more space to showcase their experience, know-how and quality. It is precisely up to them how they reach the target.

Petr Jelínek graduated from the BVA last year in the Netherlands and organized a similar course for BUT administrators and their colleagues from Masaryk University, the South Moravian Region, the Ministry of Agriculture and other contracting authorities, in co-operation with AdMaS Director of the Faculty of Civil Engineering, dr. Zdenek Dufek. “The participants gained basic theoretical knowledge and practical skills directly from experienced BVA trainers and practitioners from Best Value Europe. The BVE Director, Susan van Hes, as well as her colleague, Albert Mulder, came to Brno. The construction market in the Czech Republic has not been in good shape for several years, it is struggling with the phenomenon of low bid prices and poor quality results. In the Best Value approach, I see one of the ways to return quality to the industry, “said Dufek.

Best Value Reference:

http://www.bestvalueeurope.com/