3 ms·

I've been wondering if it might make sense to maintain a score across those involved in any project, where your score goes up for involvement with a successful

I've been wondering if it might make sense to maintain a score across those involved in any project, where your score goes up for involvement with a successful project but down when that project has issues (delays, overruns, faults), with all movement in proportion to the individual's share of the financial returns from the project. Then, when seeking bids, you could factor in the scores of those involved in the organizations bidding - giving it a weight or requiring a threshold (for average or median or P95 or something) among the participants.

kevincox 6y ago
This is similar what they have for the banning process, but the score is well specified and has a number of points. There have been terrible projects that got a passing score. So you have the classic problem of if it is public they will game it, but if it isn't public than it is corruption. But I think this is on the right track. As a simple approach you can have final-cost ratio. "Unknown" bidders would use the average score across all projects (or all first-time projects?) and known-good bidders would be able to use their own score (which may be close to 1). Known-bad bidders may have 1.5-2 multipliers which "corrects" for their underbid. Of course this too simple. You want to: - Account for time. - Account for how easy they were to work with. - You need to factor in unexpected changes. (which do have a cost, but how do you determine the true cost?) - Using the average for unknowns may make it too difficult for new companies to enter. I way I see it you want some new entries to keep your pool in check. (Although the majority of projects, and quite possibly the largest projects should be going to known-good companies). I think this is part of the problem. There are so many factors that it is difficult to rigidly define them, and if they aren't rigidly defined than you have chances for corruption. The TL;DR is that unless you just let a human make the decision it is a very hard problem, and right now we don't think that humans are trustworthy enough.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  An important point for my proposal is that we only track scores for individual humans, not aggregate entities. I think this makes a difference in a lot of ways. A new company can (should!) hire some people with solid local experience, so can have a score (we still need defaulting rules for individuals, of course). Individuals risk reputational damage if people elsewhere in the project behave badly, which should increase cooperation with controls. Similarly, well managed companies will find it easier to hire, while poorly managed companies will find it more difficult. Companies that have a lot of poorly scored individuals because of poor historical practice will be extra motivated to bring on people with a history of working on well managed projects, which would help knowledge flow about how to keep projects well managed.
542354234235 6y ago
I have seen something similar to what you are describing and not just the lowest bidder (my experience in government contracts, but not related to construction). They have proven past performance clauses (you have to show you successfully completed X number of similar projects to acceptable levels and budgets), feasibility clauses (you can’t just say you can do it, you have to provide details how you can do it with your stated time and budget and show you account for reasonable problems that come up), and capacity clauses (you have to show you actually have the equipment, personnel, experience, etc. to perform the job you are bidding for). Then all those criteria are given point values and bids are tallied up and awarded to the highest point bidder. So if you come in with a low bid but have poor past performance and inadequate equipment, you'll lose out to the higher bid from a proven performer.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  I've heard of things like that, and my proposal was definitely informed thereby. However, an important part of my proposal was that scores follow individuals rather than organizations. I expand a couple comments over: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802597

kevincox 6y ago

This is similar what they have for the banning process, but the score is well specified and has a number of points. There have been terrible projects that got a passing score. So you have the classic problem of if it is public they will game it, but if it isn't public than it is corruption. But I think this is on the right track. As a simple approach you can have final-cost ratio. "Unknown" bidders would use the average score across all projects (or all first-time projects?) and known-good bidders would be able to use their own score (which may be close to 1). Known-bad bidders may have 1.5-2 multipliers which "corrects" for their underbid. Of course this too simple. You want to: - Account for time. - Account for how easy they were to work with. - You need to factor in unexpected changes. (which do have a cost, but how do you determine the true cost?) - Using the average for unknowns may make it too difficult for new companies to enter. I way I see it you want some new entries to keep your pool in check. (Although the majority of projects, and quite possibly the largest projects should be going to known-good companies). I think this is part of the problem. There are so many factors that it is difficult to rigidly define them, and if they aren't rigidly defined than you have chances for corruption. The TL;DR is that unless you just let a human make the decision it is a very hard problem, and right now we don't think that humans are trustworthy enough.

dllthomas 6y ago
An important point for my proposal is that we only track scores for individual humans, not aggregate entities. I think this makes a difference in a lot of ways. A new company can (should!) hire some people with solid local experience, so can have a score (we still need defaulting rules for individuals, of course). Individuals risk reputational damage if people elsewhere in the project behave badly, which should increase cooperation with controls. Similarly, well managed companies will find it easier to hire, while poorly managed companies will find it more difficult. Companies that have a lot of poorly scored individuals because of poor historical practice will be extra motivated to bring on people with a history of working on well managed projects, which would help knowledge flow about how to keep projects well managed.

542354234235 6y ago

I have seen something similar to what you are describing and not just the lowest bidder (my experience in government contracts, but not related to construction). They have proven past performance clauses (you have to show you successfully completed X number of similar projects to acceptable levels and budgets), feasibility clauses (you can’t just say you can do it, you have to provide details how you can do it with your stated time and budget and show you account for reasonable problems that come up), and capacity clauses (you have to show you actually have the equipment, personnel, experience, etc. to perform the job you are bidding for). Then all those criteria are given point values and bids are tallied up and awarded to the highest point bidder. So if you come in with a low bid but have poor past performance and inadequate equipment, you'll lose out to the higher bid from a proven performer.

dllthomas 6y ago
I've heard of things like that, and my proposal was definitely informed thereby. However, an important part of my proposal was that scores follow individuals rather than organizations. I expand a couple comments over: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24802597