The State of the Sustainability Factor for Construction Procurement: The Case of Portugal

Abstract

Construction procurement criteria can be defined according to multiple factors, most commonly, the price and quality of the proposal. Construction companies must access these criteria during the development of their proposals to increase their chances of being awarded the project. In recent years, after the publication of NP ISO 20400, the sustainability of the proposal has been increasingly included in the procurement criteria in conjunction with other factors, creating a new paradigm for clients and bidders. This paper seeks to describe the use of the sustainability factor in construction procurement procedures and its initial impacts in Portugal, as it pertains to its frequency, designation, and weight in the proposal. Additionally, this document performs a descriptive statistical analysis of the public construction procedures that used the sustainability factor from 2015 to 2022, with the support of PPPData - an open-access dataset comprised of over 5000 procurement contracts. The results of this statistical analysis diagnose Portugal's sustainable public procurement in terms of its geographical, temporal, financial, and performance dispersion, in addition to drawing out its main trends. The paper concludes by discussing this research's main implications and findings and providing the best practices for clients and bidders to implement during the construction procurement concerning the sustainability factor.