Available online at www.CivileJournal.org Civil Engineering Journal (E-ISSN: 2476-3055; ISSN: 2676-6957) Vol. 7, No. 03, March, 2021 594 Investigation of Innovation during Bid Evaluation Process in the Road Construction Industry Pardeep Kumar Oad 1* , Stephen Kajewski 1 , Arun Kumar 2 , Bo Xia 1 1 Queensland University of Technology, 2 George St, Brisbane City QLD 4000, Australia. 2 RMIT University, 124 La Trobe St, Melbourne VIC 3000, Australia. Received 19 November 2020; Revised 17 February 2021; Accepted 24 February 2021; Published 01 March 2021 Abstract Tender evaluation is the procedure of choosing the best contractor for a particular project from many applicants. Although rational and logical methods can be used for bidding strategies, bid evaluation remains a skill for which an engineer’s verdict is crucial. Contractors commonly witness that tender selection is not an easy job, and the lowest bid does not necessarily win the contract. The tender decision mainly depends on quantifiable measures such as financial costs and paybacks, and qualitative or invisible factors like administrative security accountability, aptitude, and the proficiency of the contractors. Moreover, Bid evaluation is a decision-making procedure that incorporates an extensive criteria range for which the information is not accordingly. Hence, ambiguity linked to such information is not appropriate for this study. This paper aims to evaluate innovation during the bid evaluation process in the road industry. The research results indicate that the private and public sectors in Australia offer innovative products and work methods, given the chance. Therefore, innovation during the bid evaluation process is welcomed and sometimes strongly encouraged. Further, it is important to have strong research in to how to effectively determine value for money in the context of developing suitable and quality roads. Therefore, this research is useful in the context of evaluating factors that help to understand value for money in the road sector in context of bid evaluation process. Keywords: Innovation; Bid Evaluation; Road Industry; Tender Evaluation; Innovation Factors. 1. Introduction It is widely accepted that projects related to road construction should be managed effectively. The literature indicates that demands from customers in terms of value for expenditure have been increasing rapidly [1, 2]. Therefore, a rigorous evaluation of tenders to ensure an effective return on investment is essential. A failure to accurately assess tenders can lead to complications for the whole project and the road construction company. The selection of a suitable construction contractor increases the likelihood of the successful completion of a road construction project [1, 3]. This may also ensure the customer/ owner goals are achieved and the project is completed on time, within budget and delivers high quality project outputs. As innovation has a place in road construction, it will be useful to include innovation as one of the indicators in the evaluation of tenders as part of competitive tendering. The quality of roads also suffers badly due to global warming resulting in changes in the earth and environment [1, 4-6]. Therefore, in this context, previously used methods of road construction are not suitable and cannot be applied in * Corresponding author: pardeep.oad@hdr.qut.edu.au http://dx.doi.org/10.28991/cej-2021-03091676 © 2021 by the authors. Licensee C.E.J, Tehran, Iran. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).