Ehics of Bid Shopping
When I began thinking of possible topics for my philosophy paper, I was looking for a topic that was interesting to me, relevant to my field of study, and also pertained to philosophy and worldviews. I am Construction Management major and, through Estimating I last year, I was introduced to a concept called bid shopping. We briefly discussed the practice of bid shopping and why it was wrong. The only reason that I could gather from my professor for bid shopping being considered wrong was that it was an "assumed law" that all estimators went by. Well, that wasn't enough of a reason for me so I questioned weather or not bid shopping was wrong or not; I was then accused of being unethical by my peers and my professor. On the contrary, I am a very ethical person, I just am not the type to accept something just because that is the way its always been done or because of some "assumed law". Since that day in class I haven't thought a great deal about the issue, however, when co!nsidering topics for this paper, I decided that I would like to dig deeper into this issue so that I would have a good understanding of others viewpoints and then be able to form my own intelligent views on bid shopping.
hould be setting ethical standards, not breaking them. We need to be the examples in the workplace and there is no better place to show this than in the case of bid shopping. Christian Estimators should refuse to participate in any unethical bidding practices. Any bidding practice that results in giving an unfair advantage to a subcontractor or results in increased profit due to reducing others profit should be avoided. (Business by the Book, Chapters 2 & 6) deciding if bid shopping is ethical or not, we need a clear understanding of what it is and when it occurs. First, a little bit of estimating background is necessary. When an owner decides to build a building, he opens the building responsibilities up for bid. A general contractor then looks at the plans and specifications for the building and begins to form a "bid" or price to build the structure. In almost all cases, the general contractor will "sub-out" portions of the work to sub-contractors. These subcontractors will submit a bid to the general contractor for their portion of the work. The general contractor will then take all of the individual sub-contractor bids as well as his/her own bids and put together a bid package and submit it to the owner on bid day. In a competitive bid situation, an owner opens the bids to many contractors. These contractors open their "sub-bids" to many different sub-contractors. (Construction Estima! What about before the general contractor is awarded the job? This is where there are many questions being raised today. Where is the line between competitive bidding and bid shopping? Some estimators believe that they should be able to receive sub bids and then share the bids with other sub contractors in order to get the subs to lower their bids right up until the general contractor puts in hi bid. Others believe that once you receive the sub bids you should pick the one you want to use and stick with it and not inform any other sub-contractors what that number is, at least until after the general contractor makes his bid. Most people believe that the line between ethical and unethical is somewhere in the middle of these to opinions. (Ethics in Bidding) 2. Burkett, Larry Business By the Book. Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1990 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1662
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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