Borgen van verkeersveiligheid bij het aanbesteden van wegen : review van de aanbesteding van het RWS Zuid-Holland-project A4 Burgerveen-Leiden.

The Division Zuid-Holland of the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management has used a new procedure for contracting the widening of the A4 motorway near Leiden. The new procedure paid special attention to road safety in the framework of functional contracting. Tenderers could receive an imaginary discount on the tendered price if they were awarded a high rating for incorporating road safety measures into their design proposals. In this way a tender could be more attractive than those paying less attention to road safety. The discount being imaginary, the selected tenderer would be contracted for the sum quoted originally, implying that the Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management is dedicating the discounted amount to implementing specific road safety features in the design and construct process. The Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management, Division Zuid-Holland asked SWOV to assess: - whether this approach can be used to stimulate market parties to suggest road safety measures; - whether the chosen valuation method is sufficiently robust; and - whether the chosen method can be refined. Because this new procedure may be an instrument for ensuring quality in design, SWOV answered these questions in the framework of the present research project Quality assurance. SWOV concludes that the introduction of road safety as a condition for allocation is an important way to force market parties to pay more attention to road safety in drawing up design and construct tenders. The method for determining the so-called tender requirement – a document containing the functional requirements and the contract definitions on the basis of which market parties can draw up their tenders – can be further refined, as can the method to assess the safety effects of the road design in the tenders. General directions for the safety of the road design and road safety audits are important tools in this. The general assessment framework can be derived from the guidelines 'Overview Effects of Infrastructure' (OEI).