Revolutionizing contractor selection : a new approach

Abstract

Throughout the last decades, the construction industry worldwide has directed its attention towards the importance of proper contractor selection for an improved project lifecycle experience and performance in terms of budget, time, quality, and safety. This research aims to create a simple, user-friendly, and modified model that evaluates contractors based on separate criteria to assist decision makers in their contractor selection process. Although the industry already has a handful of models and procedures created for contractor selection, the field lacks a model that objectively presents all the alternatives present with a grading system where the owner gets the chance to specify his main interests and select the most appropriate contractor according to the purpose and specs of the project. The model consists of three stages of evaluation: background evaluation, performance evaluation, and bid evaluation. Each stage consists of multi-criteria analysis to generate a final grading as a percentage that represents the performance of each contractor according to the criteria and criteria weights used for assessment. The final evaluation of the alternatives creates final score cards that indicate the results of the study. After presenting the model, a real case study is applied for 20 alternatives to present the selection process as the final score cards contain the results of the study. These score cards are responsible in assisting the decision makers towards a proper contractor selection for their construction projects.