Abstract
Design-Build-Finance-Maintain (DBFM) contracts are increasingly used in long-term public construction procurement in Flanders, committing public authorities to long-term availability payments (TBV). Award decisions for these contracts are based on assessment results from different tools, such as life-cycle costing, environmental assessment, performance indicators and financing models, which are combined in Most Economically Advantageous Tender (MEAT) rankings. However, these tools rely on different assumptions and calculation methods, and their results are aggregated without verifying whether they are truly comparable. Long-term projections are also treated as fixed numbers, even though they involve significant uncertainty. As a result, public authorities may commit to long-term financial obligations based on comparisons that are neither fully aligned nor transparent about risk. This research develops and validates an interoperable and uncertainty-aware evaluation framework for DBFM procurement. It improves data comparability across existing assessment tools and introduces explicit uncertainty modelling to make long-term risks visible in tender evaluation. By aligning data across domains and representing availability payments as probability ranges rather than single values, the project strengthens the reliability and transparency of long-term public procurement decisions.
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