Stumbling blocks for competition organisers

Typically, there will be dozens, at best up to hundreds of proposals in the competition and they will be submitted in PDF format. Large and detailed vector drawings can reach tens of megabytes. Rasterised images with high visual resolution load slowly, and transitioning between files is cumbersome.

At worst, the transition to electronic evaluation turns against itself: the documents are difficult to view and the evaluation doesn’t go smoothly. Reviewers have not been able to do their work, independent of time and place. The lack of information security and anonymity has also brought new risks to the competition process.

Organising competitions has put a strain on both the organisers and the jury.

THE BASICS FOR PRODUCTIVITY

Commercial potential often remains unattained

Competitions are quality competitions where it is not justified to carry out the scoring of individual elements of proposals based on partial optimisation. The evaluation shall be based on a comparison of the entirety of the proposals. As the number of proposals increases, comparing the proposals becomes more difficult technically, and the overall quality and viability of the proposals are less important factors in this cumbersome environment.

Due to the uncertainty of the competitive tendering process, the best participants or judges may have been missed out. The unpredictability of schedules has also delayed projects.

Competitive tendering enables the development and utilisation of high-quality design expertise, but the lack of competitive tendering technology has hindered harnessing this potential for the organiser.

For the organisation

• The implementation of a credible remote evaluation process for the design competition has been identified as challenging.

• Holding the competition in accordance with the Procurement Act causes extra stress.

• A slow and laborious process increases the cost of competitive tendering.

• Anticipating the schedule and total cost of the tendering process is difficult.

• A physical presentation space is required for the competition work.

• It remains unsure whether the chosen proposal is the overall best proposal with the best development potential.

For the competition organisers

• There may be uncertainty about choosing the best tendering process.

• Competitive tendering eats up more working hours than desired.

• Coordinating schedules with the various parties involved causes difficulties.

• It is difficult to maintain the anonymity of participants at the stages that require it.

• Being informative and inclusive becomes cumbersome.

• To organise the web presence, you need a separate website creator.

For participating architects

• Participation may seem questionable due to a lack of equal opportunities for evaluation.

• Producing quantitative material takes time away from the planning of the competition work itself.

• It can take time to get feedback, and reviewing it thematically can be challenging.

• The possibility of maintaining anonymity during the comparative evaluation raises questions.

• The competition going over schedule can make things messy.

For competition judges

• Remote working is not going well. Finding content and data at the right moment is difficult.

• It will take a lot of work to coordinate schedules.

• The conditions required to ensure an equal assessment have been partially lacking.

• The lack of a systematic commentary model has created inconsistencies in judges’ comparative evaluations.

• With the cut-and-paste model, reviews may have ended up attributed to the wrong proposals.

• With the pandemic, the risk of infection can hinder participation.