European Journal of Technology and Design

9-15

Authors: Maria Musa Mukaddas, Hassan Umar Mohammed, Ismaila Isah Suleiman

The menace of the unethical practice in which a contractor discloses the bid price of one contractor or subcontractor to another, in order to obtain a lower bid price, otherwise known as bid shopping has been a major bane of the construction industry. This blight is responsible for a myriad of problems for the industry. This study examines these practices and their effects on the public sector of the construction industry. Thirty-six (36) questionnaires were administered to experts in the area of construction to understand their perspectives on the anomaly and its effect on project delivery in Bauchi metropolis, Nigeria. Findings of the study showed that some that 25.0 % of the respondents were Architects, 36.1 % quantity surveyors, 22.2 % were builders, 11.1 % project managers and 5.6 % were structural engineers. The highest educational qualification of respondents in the quantity surveying profession observed were, 41.7% of the respondents had earned B.sc, 27.8 % had HND, and 8.3 % had PGD, while 22.2 %, had MSc. In terms of experience 47.2 % had 5-10 years of experience, 30.6 % had less than 5 years of experience, 19.4 % have 11-15 years of experience and 2.8 % have 16-20 years of experience. 36.1 % of the respondents were consultants, 38.9 % were contractors while 25.0% were clients. Findings further some of the techniques used for bid shopping include post-award bid shopping technique ranked first, pre-award bid shopping technique was ranked second and bidding via an electronic reverse auction technique was ranked third. Effect of bid shopping on project delivery shows that “Promotes lower work quality was ranked first, Delays project completion was ranked second, creates an adverse work environment was ranked third, Increased life costs on a project was ranked third and General inefficient prosecution of work was ranked fifth”. Possible implications of bid shopping indicates that vulnerability to frequent maintenance work was ranked first, High maintenance cost was ranked second, poor workmanship was ranked third, poor value for money was ranked forth, poor aesthetics value was ranked fifth and Collapse of buildings was ranked sixth. Penalties that should be taken against contractors who practice bid shopping, the respondents observed that imposing liquidated damages or fines was ranked first, disqualifying winning bidders who are immediately found guilty of bid shopping was ranked second, no any action was ranked third, suspension of licenses or permit was ranked fourth and eventual punishment by lack of competitive bidding was ranked fifth.

22-29

Authors: Viktor Ya. Tsvetkov

The article explores information morphism. Information morphism is considered as a generalization of information transformations with information sets. The article introduces the concepts of direct and inverse morphism. The article introduces the concepts of symmetric and asymmetric morphism. The article introduces the concepts of compositional and non-compositional morphism. The concepts introduced are illustrated by examples from photogrammetry and geoinformatics. Implication and morphism have the same arrow notation. The substantive difference between implication and morphism is shown. Information morphism is considered as categorical modeling. The content of categorical modeling is described. A morphological morphism is described. The semantic and morphological morphism is described. It is shown that the compositional morphism requires the fulfillment of the complementarity condition for the input sets. A symmetric morphism preserves information correspondence. Non-symmetric morphism provides only commensurability. To assess compliance, it is necessary to select a criterion or parameter of informational compliance. A comparative description of information compliance and proportionality is given. Information correspondence is a strict condition between sets. Proportionality is a mild condition between sets. Morphism is not only a generalization of the patterns of the information field, but a method of identifying patterns. Compositional morphism is an example of such a morphism. The use of morphism for metamodeling is noted. Information morphism generalizes information processes and allows their comparative analysis. Information morphism reveals latent factors and extracts implicit knowledge from them.