Year: 2014
Type: dissertation
Abstract: There is a global trend of greater environmental concern within public procurement.European directives have impact on national legislation, which influences Swedish municipalities to regulate procurement practices through environmental and procurement policy documents adopted by local politicians.These policies are intended to permeate all levels of municipal practices and demonstrate the intentions of the municipalities.However, the policies are not always reflected in the practices of the officials executing municipal procurement.This applies not least to procurement of construction projects.Environmental requirements and criteria included in municipal construction projects are often limited.Today, the larger construction contractors have developed sufficient environmental skills to contribute to a sustainable urban development.However, the restricted client demand for such competences hampers the possibilities for the desirable urban development.The purpose of this thesis is to analyse the relation between municipal environmental policies and municipal practices for the procurement of construction projects in eight Swedish municipalities.The studied municipalities were Gothenburg and its neighbour municipalities.The empirical data were collected through 24 semistructured interviews.At each municipality one procurement official, one environmental official and one politician were interviewed.The investigation involved three research questions: How are environmental and procurement policy documents related?How are environmental issues handled in municipal construction procurement?How is the practice of interdepartmental collaboration in municipalities related to policy documents?The findings of this thesis suggest that the current municipal procurement practices for construction projects are unsatisfactory from a sustainability viewpoint.Only lowest price as contract award criterion for construction projects is used among the investigated municipalities.The relation between environmental and procurement policies is often unclear and the broader internal municipal expertise is seldom used during construction procurement.The choice of environmental requirements to include in tender documents was often made by procurement officials, without involvement of environmental officials.
Authors: Mathias Olsson, Filip Stenler
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
Funder: Chalmers Tekniska Högskola
OpenAlex ID: W82908564