Health and Safety at the Sourcing Stage of Public Works Procurement: A Case of Procurement Entities in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana
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Date
2015-02-10
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Abstract
Public authorities may legitimately wish to ensure that the candidates they select have endorsed certain policies in their general professional behavior including safe working environment in achieving value for money. Once contract has been signed for the tenderer to start work, it may be extremely difficult and costly for the contracting authorities to modify or terminate the contract where the chosen candidate is not performing to the required health and safety standards.
The study became necessary from observation that some clients secure a low price tender at the expense of the health and safety of workforce resulting in winning tenderers likely to be the ones that do not provide health and safety for their workforce. The implications of such action prompt for investigation into the extent to which health and safety issues are considered by public entities during the sourcing stage of the public procurement process.
The objectives were to identify how Health and Safety considerations are applied and the effect of considering health and safety at the sourcing stage of works procurement on project performance in terms of cost, quality and timely delivery by public entities.
Procurement Entities of all the Municipal and District assemblies in the Brong Ahafo Region were chosen for the study. The total population for the research was made up of Heads of the Procurement Entities of all the Twenty Seven (27) Municipal and District Assemblies in the Brong Ahafo Region for whom questionnaires as research instrument were administered to for data collection. A response rate of 70.37% was obtained for analysis.
The research concluded that though most of the procuring entities perform quite well in considering health and safety at the sourcing stage of works procurement, there is certainly more that could be done.
In the recommendations clients were urged to act more responsibly in protecting the health and safety of workers while aiming at value for money in at the sourcing stage and enforce the implementation of all requirements in the procurement processes.
Description
A Thesis Submitted to the Department of Building and Technology, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Science in Procurement Management, 2014