Blockchain-based E-tendering Evaluation Framework

Tendering & Bidding generally involve many construction units participating in a project bidding. The purchaser selects the best bidder with a short construction period, low cost, high quality, and good reputation. There are huge economic benefits and points of concern behind it. However, tendering suffers an increased risk of data tampering due to the centralized database architecture, resulting in huge financial losses and unnecessary consumption of human resources. Blockchain technology has gained increasing attention in the construction industry because of its high transparency, information traceability, non-repudiation, and non-tampering characteristics. Initial explorations have been carried out to discuss blockchain benefits in the e-tendering process. However, existing studies are limited to conducting qualitative analysis or proposing conceptual frameworks. A workable blockchain-enabled solution that supports basic functions in the e-tendering process still lacks. Therefore, as an initial exploration, this paper presents a secure blockchain-based framework for tender evaluation. Besides, technical components such as tendering smart contracts are developed to support framework functionalities. The framework feasibility is validated in a tendering evaluation example. Results show that the proposed framework guarantees secure tender evaluation by keeping data traceability and immutability.