Based on a Junnila's paracompactness characterization we give a definition of pairwise paracompact space which permits us to prove that a bitopological space is quasi-metrizable if, and only if, it is a pairwise developable and pairwise paracompact space. An easy consequence of this result is the biquasi-metric form of the Morita metrization theorem. We also give some results on open mappings and strong quasi-metrics.