Analysis of the quality attributes used in establishing best value tenders in the UK social housing sector

Purpose – A number of studies have highlighted the problems and challenges that have been encountered with the analysis of best value and partnering tenders carried out in the UK public sector. One of the principal issues is that client organisations and decision makers have to assess numerous diverse quality attributes as part of the contractor selection process. The purpose of this paper is to present the findings of research, which aimed to identify the core factors, which could be used to differentiate bids in the context of social housing. Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was sent to a cross-section of stakeholders within the social housing sector asking the respondents to rank the importance of 35 attributes with respect to selecting a successful contractor. The responses were subjected to principal component analysis to detect a structure in the relationship between the attributes and classify the attributes into a set of factors. Findings – The results indicate that the 35 attributes could be grouped together and reduced to ten core factors. Practical implications – Application of the results could enable the stakeholders to streamline the tender analysis procedure allowing the high volume of tenders to be dealt with more effectively and efficiently. Originality/value – It is not expected that client organisations would limit their tender analysis to the ten core factors only. They are not intended to be prescriptive and the paper only provides a starting point in using them in the choice of contractor selection quality attributes.