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How Procurement Should Work and What to Check

Procurement process and how it should work
Procurement process and how it should work

How procurement should work (and what to check)

Planning & market sounding
Should publish procurement plans with realistic timelines and budgets, so competent bidders can prepare.
Red flags: artificial urgency; splitting contracts to avoid thresholds; unexplained direct awards.

Tender stage
Open, competitive tendering is the default. Documents must be publicly available; OCDS fields (planning • tender • award • contract • implementation) should be completed.
Red flags: tailor-made specs, brand-locking, excessive experience thresholds, “one day” bid windows, hidden addenda.
Citizen check: Track number of bidders; unusual patterns (same few companies); complaints filed. Open-contracting evidence shows that competition increases and prices fall when data are open and used (OCP impact). 

Award & contract
Publish the winning bid, evaluation scores, contract price vs. estimated cost, performance bonds, and change-order rules.
Red flags: a huge gap between the engineer’s estimate and the award; many sole-source “emergencies”; undisclosed beneficial owners.

Implementation
Publish milestones, progress payments, variation orders, inspection reports, lab tests, and geo-tagged photos. Infrastructure transparency frameworks (CoST / OC4IDS) provide templates; citizen verification adds teeth. 

Completion & O&M
Require As-Built drawings; publish defect lists and defects-liability period obligations; fund and disclose O&M plans.
Red flags: ribbon-cut with no As-Built; no line item for O&M; identical “as planned/as built” drawings.

Citizen walk-through: following one project end-to-end

Imagine your city announces a “Comprehensive Flood Resilience Package.” Here’s how a resident group can follow the money without being engineers:

  1. Find the procurement plan on the ministry/city website. List tenders tied to the package (dredging, pump stations, culvert upsizing, road elevation). If none are listed, file an access-to-information (ATI) request. The World Bank and OGP emphasize that publishing information before tendering enhances market response (World Bank).
  2. Download the tender documents. Check: (a) Is competition open? (b) Are specs brand-neutral and performance-based? (c) Is the timeline realistic? (d) Are community impacts considered? Red flags suggest capture at the design stage (UNDP). 
  3. Watch the award. How many bids? Who won? Were there protests? Compare the award price to the engineer’s estimate; considerable deviations deserve scrutiny (OCP evidence). 
  4. Monitor implementation data. Ask for milestone completion certificates, lab test results, and photos. If only scanned PDFs are available, request machine-readable files; 'PDF traps' disable public oversight (CoST guidance). Moreover, if officials refuse to provide data or offer only incomplete information, consider using freedom of information requests or collaborating with civil society organizations to apply pressure. Document any refusals or barriers in obtaining data to strengthen advocacy efforts for transparency.
  5. Ground-truth. Safely observe sites: rebar spacing, concrete pours, slope protection, silt management. Invite local universities or engineering societies to advise.
  6. Check O&M. Will pumps be staffed and powered? Are dredging cycles scheduled? Are budgets allocated and published?
  7. Validate outcomes. After heavy rain, record water depth and duration, as well as blocked points. Compare to pre-project baselines. Share findings with the media, council, and auditors.

When data are open, and citizens engage, procurement becomes a quality race, not to connections (OCP; CoST). 

Special case of emergencies: speed without “disaster capitalism”

Extreme events demand speed. However, “emergency procurement” is often misused to award overpriced, low-quality contracts. Good practice:

  • Pre-qualified vendor pools created before disaster season, with price caps and quality checks.
  • Ceiling prices and framework agreements that discourage gouging.
  • Transparent beneficiary registries with privacy safeguards to reduce ghost beneficiaries.
  • Post-event open contracting packages: publish every emergency contract within 10 days.

Open-contracting case studies (notably ProZorro in Ukraine) show that even in a crisis, radical transparency—“everyone sees everything”—can maintain competition and save money (Wired feature; OCP). 

Data systems that turn money into protection

You don’t need a supercomputer; you need consistent, usable, public data tied to the places people live.

  • OCDS & OC4IDS: publish full contracting and infrastructure- delivery data, including geolocation of assets, milestones, variations, and payments (OCP; CoST) (Open Contracting Partnership).
  • Beneficial ownership registers: expose real owners of bidding firms.
  • Machine-readable EIAs, safeguards & MEL: no more unsearchable scans.
  • Open geodata & community science: flood depths, drainage blockages, survival rates, shelter uptime.
  • Interoperability: Contract IDs should match budget lines, asset registries, and audit references to enable citizens and auditors to reconcile numbers (World Bank procurement reform guidance).

The Infrastructure Transparency Index (ITI) now assesses how well countries disclose and utilize infrastructure data; it serves as a lever for reformers to demand improvements (CoST/ITI) (Infrastructure Transparency Index)

Red flags by stage (pin this)

  • Prioritization: Projects announced in politically pivotal districts despite lower hazard scores; risk maps not cited (UNDP). 
  • Design: No climate-proofing specs; consultation minutes missing; BoQs stuffed with “provisional sums.”
  • Procurement: One or two bidders; identical typos across bids (collusion); extreme experience thresholds; direct awards with vague “emergency” labels (World Bank/UNODC statistics point to high risk at this stage).
  • Construction: No independent lab tests; milestones “completed” while site idle; late, unexplained variations.
  • O&M: No line item; no schedule; no responsible unit named.
  • MEL: Outputs reported (km dredged) but outcomes absent (flood hours reduced); only glossy PDFs; no data portal.

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