What Are the Readability Issues in Sub-Contracting’s Tender Documents?

Readability is an important aspect that each sub-contracting’s tender documentation should have in order to ensure commonality in the interpretation of its terms by the general contractor and sub-contractor. Otherwise, their contractual relationship is fueled by conflict. Previous studies indicated that the documents provided to the sub-contractors in practice are often not easy to read; the reason behind this problem has not been explored yet. This paper bridges this gap by defining 14 readability issues, following a systematic content analysis of real documents of 34 tenders of the sub-contracting arrangement. Further, it introduces a framework of the anti-measures of the specified issues through examining the readability-associated literature. The research’s chief finding is that 8 out of the 14 readability issues are responsible for 73.1184% of the ease-of-reading problems in the sub-contracting’s tender documentation. These readability issues are as follows: poor presentation of the format of the tender documentation, sentences and clauses are too long and complicated, spelling and grammatical errors, abstractness or vagueness of words or sentences, using controversial phrases, repetition of provisions or clauses, poor illustration of procedure or process, and listing of irrelevant conditions to the tender scope. The study also, while discussing the readability issues, categorizes them into four pivots, including structural and presentation-related problems, lengthening and repetition-related problems, text-related problems, and terminology-related problems. To date, it is believed that such classification has not been realized in any of the prior literature. These results have implications that can benefit drafters by enabling them to know the possible dimensions of the readability problems and their countermeasures concerning the sub-contracting’s tender documents for up-skilling their drafting style when formulating such documentation in the future.

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