Construction project partnering using fuzzy based decision making methodology

Abstract

Since 1990, key industry players have adopted alliance and partnering strategies. Partnering creates both a win-win situation and more synergy in team work. However, not all projects are successful. The increasing complexity of construction projects has plagued the construction industry substantially. Project partnering (PP), therefore, has become the critical factor in project success. Two parameters should be considered in PP – project management performance (PMP) and participant satisfaction (PS). There are also many possible PP factors that could influence a project's success or failure and these factors should be incorporated during evaluation. A critical factor index is therefore introduced to address these factors and integrate them into the project partnering assessment (PPA) to deal with the complications in construction partnerships. The application of ‘fuzzy-reasoning’ techniques is useful in handling the variables that arise from the construction process. An analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is used to structure and prioritize the diverse PP factors. Finally, an example of PP analysis of library building is used to illustrate the proposed methodology and the results have proved that it works effectively as expected.