A QUANTITATIVE MULTI-CRITERIA CONSTRUCTION PROJECT EVALUATION SYSTEM AND APPLICATION IN CONTRACTOR SELECTION PROCESS

Abstract

Construction project success evaluation is considered very important to all project stakeholders. For contractor, project evaluation is useful to assess and compare when project was completed. For the government management, it helps to develop a database of construction project evaluation, contractor performance, and tendency of construction project performance. For the owner, it helps to look back how project was performed and provide a reference for future project strategy. A construction project evaluation system, which was quantitative and applicable, is an urgent mission, especially in developing countries. Therefore, the objective of this research is to establish the quantitative multi-criteria construction project evaluation system, and provide a reference for contractor selection in bidding process. In this evaluation system, construction project is evaluated in two levels. The first level is called indicator. Each indicator is assessed by criteria, second level. It considers the quantitative evaluation from all project stakeholders which is based on actual information when project was completed. In order to establish the evaluation system, multi-criteria evaluation based theory, quantitative method, linear additive models were applied. Four main surveys and documentary searching were carried out in two years at construction companies. The preliminary survey was performed to get the final list of indicators and criteria which included ten indicators and forty-five criteria. The indicators were ‘Project Time’, ‘Project Cost’, ‘Project Quality’, ‘Project Safety’, ‘Technical Performance’, ‘Productivity’, ‘Stakeholder Satisfaction’, ‘Sustainable Environment’, ‘Communication’, and ‘Disputes & Litigation’. The importance survey was designed to achieve weight assignment for indicators and criteria. Three methods, which were Summing Responses, Structural Equation Modeling, and Combination of Battelle EES & Importance Scale Matrix, were appropriate and used for final result. Testing survey was conducted to validate and evaluate the system. Then, large scale survey was performed to develop data for construction project evaluation. The large scale survey result was reasonable, explainable, and compatible with literature review and practical performance of construction industry during investigation. This result provided a reference threshold for contractor selection process in bidding. Finally, the quantitative multi-criteria construction project evaluation (QMCPE) system was achieved. QMCPE is quantitative, bias avoiding, easy, and applicable. QMCPE provides the complete indicators and criteria of evaluation system, their quantitative weight assignment, instruction for evaluating each indicator and criterion, their measurement scale, and their combination method. QMCPE also points out the project evaluation score for further application. The software solution was designed, named VT Software, based on the concept of QMCPE system, to make the evaluation process faster, easier, more reliable and applicable.