Development of the Prototype Simulation System about the Bid Rate

In Japan, when the national or a local government orders a public work, a contract official is mandated to set a threshold price, which is calculated based on detailed design. A threshold price is the upper limit of the... [ view full abstract ]

In Japan, when the national or a local government orders a public work, a contract official is mandated to set a threshold price, which is calculated based on detailed design. A threshold price is the upper limit of the bidding price, and a contractor who bids exceeding the price is disqualified in the bidding. Furthermore, the lowest limit price is set as calculated from the threshold price. The contractor who bids below the lowest limit price is asked closely the reason of such a low price. In order to compute the threshold price, a system named “a cost estimation system” is required.

The procurement method of public construction in Japan was only competition by the prices conventionally, MLIT promotes the comprehensive bidding evaluation method by which a successful bidder is decided in consideration of a technical evaluation point with the technical proposal in addition to a price, recently. So, to set a technical evaluation point is important to secure quality of the public works.

In this study, we built a simulation model for the purpose of a cost estimation system using a multi agent system. In this model, each agent repeats learning to maximize profit according to a strategy and sets bidding price.

Although our approach has limitations in setting parameters, it could be useful to the quality of the study by changing the method of the setting parameters.