Tendering and bidding is critical in the business process in construction industry and appears to be the special area to be improved. The exploitation of internet as well as Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in construction industry has received little attention compared to that in manufacturing and business in our country. According to their nature, the activities in business environment can be grouped under two categories with respect to operation oriented and project oriented. Accordingly, operation centric and project centric business environments can be distinguished. While activities involved in the operation centric business environment are often highly repetitive in the production phase, for instance, in industry manufacturing, those in the project centric business environment have unique and temporal characters, for example, in construction industry.

Aiming to pursue the two major criterions, namely efficiency and effectiveness, the ICT have been taken advantages of in operation centric business environment, such as in manufacturing industry. The achievements can be observed from the emergence of virtual enterprise, agile production, the development of Enterprise Resource Planning systems, to name but a few. However, only to a small degree, these modern technologies are exploited in construction industry. Furthermore, the results, if there are, are often the isolated automation islands. For example, without the application of network to exchange data and share information among partners/sub-contractors, fax and telephone are the two main communication tools, which often result in misunderstanding and prolonged process lead-time. As a consequence, the business process of these firms, who don't apply today's advanced ICT, often faces a notable potential for improvement.

Furthermore, tendering and bidding is critical in the business process in construction industry and appears to be the special area to be improved. In this process, often a large number of participants including contracting authorities, constructor candidates, suppliers, and manufacturers etc are engaged. While contracting authority performs the tendering related activities, such as the preparation, notification and modification of the tendering documents, the evaluations of bids, as well as, the sign of contract with the winner, interested organizations, i.e., contract candidates, often make their effort in responding to the tendering authority to win the contract, which is, bidding. Due to the complexity of the involved activities and many people concerned, who are usually separated in different geography locations, a system based on the application of ICT should be devised to accommodate the real-time communication, data exchange and information sharing, as well as automate the workflows of tendering and bidding process thus leading to the delivery of the best quality product coupled with the lowest cost and shortest duration.

In view of the traditional tendering and bidding process that is often long and characterized by a substantial investment of time and effort but often with a limited success ratio, an effective process is required to overcome the disadvantages of the traditional one thus saving time of the participants and increasing their work efficiency.
Traditional tendering and bidding process as shown in Figure 1 is often conducted offline with the use of fax, telephone and through human-human interactions. Such a way to perform all the involved activities makes the acquisition of the tendering documents, communication among interested organizations and suppliers/sub-contractors, as well as the bid preparation long and complicated. Thus the lead-time of this important process for potential contractors gaining the contract often ranges from weeks to months.

Rather than online noticing the interested organizations the new tenders, the tendering (or contracting) authority often faxes or phones to the contract candidates after finishing the tendering documents. There is a great possibility for these documents to be modified after release. Choosing contract candidates by adopting this way often limits the contractor selection to a small size pool of previous known firms. The receivers of these tender notifications will make the choice of the tenders to bid according to their current capabilities. Once the tenders are determined, they will ask the whole tendering documents from the authorities who prepared these documents. After that, the suppliers/subcontractors are selected from a familiar group. As a consequence, like the selection of the contractor by the tendering authority, these contract candidates may not obtain the suppliers that can delivery better products. This is because they are limited to the previous known ones thus other firms' potentials and capabilities can't be detected and employed. According to the items listed in the documents and information provided by the suppliers/sub-contractors, the candidates decide the tendering price, contract period etc to prepare the bid.

After the finish of the time-consuming bid preparation, the bid documents are be submitted to the tendering authority for evaluation. The evaluation of bids is complicated by two criterions in regarding to financial and technical considerations. It often requires the co-effort made by contracting authorities, consultants, and surety companies (i.e., the banks issuing the required

Heritage destroyed

THERE are many things which make Karachi stand out amongst the cities of Pakistan. Its massive growth since 1947 is one, its cosmopolitan outlook is another. But what gives it uniqueness is that it is a new phenomenon. It does not have a history like Lahore and Multan. It is in historical terms quite fresh. It owes its existence to the British. There was no Karachi two centuries ago. Therefore, whatever history it has consists of the British period, and the British did leave lots of things.
The areas in Karachi developed during British times like Saddar, Clifton, Lines Area and Malir were full of beautiful colonial structures. They give the city grace and pride.
Karachi can be compared to Hong Kong, another British city. In the past few years, however, there has been an attack on Karachi's heritage. The Civil Lines Area (next to Marriot Hotel) used to be a living museum. All the buildings there were heritage buildings. Today, however, more than half of the Victorian-style buildings are gone and in their place stand gaudy concrete apartment blocks.
The builders in pursuit of their narrow profit motive are on a rampage. Clifton today is quickly losing its serene touch and becoming a noisy concrete jungle. I am deeply surprised why the NGOs and citizenry have not raised their voice on this assault on Karachi's heritage. Do we really want all the old buildings, many of them in very good condition, to be pulled down? What will this leave for future generation of Karachites? They will be totally unaware of the city's glorious roots.
However, all is not lost. There are still considerable structures left and they can be saved if timely action is taken. The public of Karachi and its intelligentsia must come forward to save the heritage buildings from being pulled down.

OSAMA USTAFA
Islamabad

Roadway planning

THOSE who are thinking and planning a supplementary roadway to Karachi’s main artery, Sharea Faisal, need to be commended for at least trying to do something to ease the traffic problems in the long run.
However, one needs to think of the massive disruption the process of construction of this elevated roadway would do to the traffic on this extremely busy road, which will be nightmarish for the daily travellers for the many years it will take to make.
Also the environmental impact of this elevated roadway on an otherwise relatively ‘attractive’ passageway will be quite negative to say the least. To the thinkers and planners, I would like to give a suggestion: consider putting this elevated roadway along the railway tracks, which run all the way from the City Railway Station, almost parallel to Sharea Faisal, and go past the airport and then on to the outskirts of the city: the same length of roadway as was being considered can be made here instead. The advantages of this are:
a. It will not cause any serious disruption to the commuters while construction is going on.
b. The railway tracks are in a strip of land where there is enough room to put the structures for the elevated roadway, without causing any hindrances.
c. These railway lines will also be used in the future by the circular train system which the city fathers are thinking of reviving.
At major intersections of this elevated roadway, the circular train system could have bus stops and train stops, which will give an opportunity to integrate and interface the two means of mass transportation and changing from one to the other will become very easy for the users.
d. There will be relatively little visual impact if the roadway is constructed in this location.

AR. TARIQ H. AAMIR
Karachi

Plight of DHA residents

THE residents of Khayaban- i-Hafiz are mentally stressed due to the plans of the DHA administration to build a flyover right over the residential area. The residents living there were not consulted and the flyover is being made unilaterally without taking into account the interest of the community.

It is quite obvious that building such a flyover will lead to accumulation of rainwater, become a safe haven for drug addicts and most importantly cause environmental and noise pollution.
The flyover construction has already begun and a pillar has already been constructed on Gizri and another hole has been dug on Khyaban-i-Hafiz, iron bars have been placed around it without any light to identify it, thus posing a serious hazard for moving traffic. A few days back a motorcyclist was killed as he was not able to see it.
A joint application has been given by the affected residents about three weeks ago but the administrator has not found time to invite them to discuss the issue with the community living there.
In view of the above, may we request the DHA administrator and the corps comander to give us an appointment so that we can explain our plight.

AFFECTED RESIDENTS
Karachi

A plan is to some extent a summary like an analytical contents table. In a form so condensed that it sems as clear as crystal and like a geometrical figures, it contains an enormous quality of ideas and the impulse of an intention. ––– Le Corbusier, 1923

bonds to the contractor). Therefore, a huge amount of paper work is involved in the evaluation process, which is one of the factors leading to the long tendering and bidding process. Finally, the winner will get the contract according to the evaluation result and the contract for the project will be signed between the tendering authority and the winner.
In summary, the geography separation of the participants, the paper work involved, the inactive response, the unnecessary iterations and the most important of all, the little exploitation of ICT lead to a long and often complicated tendering and bidding process. In the traditional tendering and bidding process, contract candidates determine the tender selection and accordingly prepare the bids just based on their own capabilities. The advantages of strategic alliance, which have been explored in detail in the operation centric business environment, have received little attention, if not ignored, in this process.
Considering this important feature of e-business, this strategy is included in the proposed tendering and bidding process. Further, the concept of early supplier involvement is incorporated into the decision making process for selecting the tender to bid.
In the ICT-based system supporting online tender and bidding, the proposed process is shown in Figure 2. The tendering authority online prepares the tender documents and saves them in the database. As a necessary step, they upload the tender notifications and corresponding tendering documents so that they can be accessed and downloaded by the interested organizations. After searching the new published tender notice, the contract candidates will download the notice and tender documents that they are interested in.
Attempting to strengthen the competitiveness, these firms begin to search in the database for the potential partners together with which they can form a group. The partners in the group usually posses the capabilities lacked by others thus supplementing each other. With the improved competitive edges, the possibility to beat competitors to win the contract is increased. Thus through the real-time communication online, a virtual organization for bidding is formed. This is same as the concept of virtual enterprise in manufacturing industry. All of them attempt to strengthen their competitive advantages to gain/win order/contract at a large likelihood. Accordingly, the decision making process of the tender to bid is realized taking into account the overall capabilities of this formed virtual organization. Further more, the selection of suppliers/sub-contractors is integrated into this decision making process. The multi-agent systems are based on the contract net paradigm. In particular, a manager/contractor contract net is employed. Through the real-time communication and information sharing among virtual organization and suppliers/subcontractors, the finial decision is made to choose the tender to bid.

To a great extent, the added processes, that is, the formation of a virtual organization bearing the same aim and the selection of suppliers/sub-contractors before the determination of tender, allow the participants to win the contract coupled with less time and effort paid compared with the traditional way. Also the usability of the capability of each partner and the profit to be made can be increased.
During the bid preparation process, the tender documents are elaborated, the partners coordinated by the leader communicate with each other  through Internet and Intranet to define the technique solutions, determine the tender price, contract period, as well as other items as required by the tendering documents. By adopting the optimal bid model, the trade-off between time and price can be made. After finishing the bid preparation, bid documents are submitted to the contracting authority online by the virtual organization leader appointed during the formation of the virtual organization. The aim of selection a leader is to smooth the interface and communication between the virtual organization and the authority. It's the leader who communicates with the authority, coordinates the other partners and has the top-level responsibility for the successful completion of the project if they win the contract.
According to the evaluation approach, taking into account the tender price and contract period stated in the bid documents, the contracting authority can determine the best bid for business and send online notification awarding the contract. The contract result is stored in the database and published in the internet.
With the considerations of all the fundamental issues surrounding online tendering and bidding, a Web-based system must have two basic properties: 1) supporting the information sharing, data exchange, and real time communication among all the participants involved; and 2) enabling real-time tendering and bidding. Advanced ICT, as well as electronic linkages allow better communication and cooperation among the location separated entities to achieve a common goal or realize the same interest. The framework of online tendering and bidding as shown in Figure 3 is devised to address the issues relating to the automation of this process. All the activities involved in online tendering and bidding can be grouped under four major phases including tendering, virtual organization formation, bidding and contract award. The tasks in the tendering phase are mainly performed by tendering authorities, such as the tendering document preparation, saving, uploading, modification and publication etc. While in the virtual organization formation phase, the acquisition of tender documents, the real-time communication and negotiation among potential partners, suppliers /sub-contractors, as well as the determination of tender are conducted, the bid preparation related activities, for example, tendering documents elaboration, data exchange, information sharing, technical solution definition and bid submission are concerned in bidding phase. The contract award phase encompasses a number of activities ranging from the evaluation of bid document submitted by the virtual organizations to contract signing to database updating.
Literature review suggests that in construction industry there are quite a few areas such as tendering and bidding process, which can be made more efficient due to the repetitive nature of these processes. Leveraging on ICT in such processes could improve effectiveness of the processes and thus help in cutting the overhead costs in construction industry. Since such aspects are already considered in the process of manufacturing business environment, ICT can also be used in construction industry. Such an opportunity can lead to reduced process lead-time as well.
In construction industry, ICT could be of greater use and as bidding is done by multiple players in the industry, a mass system like Internet could be of more use as it can be made flexible in terms of contents and context by the owner of the process and at the same time reach worldwide for a greater participation by the bidders. In view of its important role and complexity, an ICT-based integrated system based on a proposed tendering and bidding process is highly recommendable. While traditional tendering and bidding process is usually conducted offline, the proposed system enables efficiency and effectiveness, i.e., the two major criterions pursued by all the firms for real-time communication, data exchange and information sharing among multiple participants.

References
* Arain, F.M. and Low, S.P. (2007) Leveraging on Information Technology for effective Management of Variations in Educational Building Projects:
A KBDSS approach, Centre for Education in the Built Environment, UK, Working paper 10, pp. 1 - 88.
* Fisk, E. R. (1997) Construction Project Administration. (5th edition) Prentice Hall, New Jersey.