Workshop report - Benchmarking the outcome of competitive tendering

Workshop 1 was concerned to identify the real results of competitive tendering, and experience on how to make it work better, using evidence from the rail and bus sectors in a large number of countries spread around the world. It was found that competitive tendering had generally been successful in terms of quality and costs, but problems had occurred in a number of cases, so careful attention must be paid to the design of tendering exercises, details of the contract, risk-sharing arrangements and the approach to any re-negotiation found to be necessary. As a result, an important conclusion is that the tendering authority needs a high degree of expertise in these issues; any thought that competitive tendering relieves the public authority of the need for expertise in public transport is mistaken.