The Tricky for Small and Medium Contracting Firms to Win Construction Tender Opportunities in Tanzania: A Collaborative Procurement

Abstract

The study investigates on influence of using collaborative procurement as a tricky for small and medium contracting firms in Tanzania win construction tender opportunities. To assess the innovation behind using collaborative procurement for contractors win procurement opportunities three objectives were formulated. These were i) to determine the power of collaborative procurement in attaining technical and managerial competence of the contracting firm ii) to examine the contribution of collaboration in procurement towards empowering the partnership with financial capability and iii) to explore the impacts of collaboration in procurement on formalizing the operations of contracting-bidding firm. Moreover by applying explanatory research design while the focus group being the technicians, contractors, engineers, architects , User department and PMU personnel obtained from TANROADs and TARURA found in Mbeya then the reality was revealed. Indeed using a stratified sampling technique the 100 unit of inquiry was derived. It through use of Likert scale questionnaire, and by reading publications of CRB, ERB, and AQRB as well as journal articles the facts were gathered and analysed by employing inferential statistical tools. The facts found were: - it is with absolute fit index 2.60 and incremental fit index >0.90 the technical and managerial competence revealed to be shared through collaborative procurement. It was moreover found that collaborative procurement empower the joint contracting firm financially given the correlation co-efficient=0.74. Furthermore it was found that collaborative procurement contribute positively towards formalization of contracting firm given the latent variable analysis test result>0.4 Despite of the revealed positive influence of collaborative procurement but from the same field area the tricky found to be insignificantly put into practice with P<0.05 and that is the reason why ≤40% only of the procurement opportunities found to be won by local contracting firms while the remaining 60% chances won by foreigners. Thus this study recommend that the small and medium contracting firms while adhering to integrity should form partnership for them to develop and effectively compete and win the procurement opportunities in this globalized world of stiff competition.