Summary
Transportation and Economic Corridors’ (the department) procurement processes are guided by the Government of Alberta’s Procurement Accountability Framework (PAF) which is based on the principles of fairness, transparency and integrity.
Objective and Scope
Our audit objective was to assess whether the department has effective processes to ensure fair and competitive procurement of its construction tenders.
Our audit focused on the solicitation stage through to the contract award stage and included contracts that the department ultimately awarded to the proponent with the lowest priced compliant bid, using either a one-stage or two-stage method. We focused on contracts awarded based on lowest price because the magnitude of the contract spend is significant.
Conclusion
Based on our audit criteria, we conclude that the department has processes to ensure fair and competitive procurement of its construction tenders but not all of these processes are effective, and improvements can be made.
We made three recommendations to the department.