Contractor selection criteria: Investigation of opinions of Singapore construction practitioners

The construction industry has witnessed the failure of many contractors due to varying reasons such as financial problems, poor performance, or accidents arising from the lack of adequate safety consideration at worksites. All these incidents have led to the impression that the current system of awarding the contracts is inefficient in selecting the contractor capable of meeting the demands and challenges of present times and hence needs to be reviewed accordingly. Therefore, in an attempt to investigate the current situation of the Singapore construction industry a questionnaire survey was conducted for accruing the data required to identify the important contractor selection criteria (CSC) and to draw upon construction practitioners' opinions regarding the importance of those CSC in assessing the capabilities of the candidate contractors during the selection process. The research reported upon forms part of a larger study that aims to develop a computer-interactive multicriteria decision system for contractor selection involving identification of CSC for inclusion in the system, investigation of CSC preferences of construction practitioners, and establishment of weights for those CSC from their perceived importance determined through the questionnaire survey of Singapore construction practitioners. The study highlights that there are statistically significant differences in opinions regarding the degree of importance assigned to some CSC among public clients, private clients, and contractors. Findings from the study may act as an aid in improving the Singapore construction industry by helping construction clients identify multiple CSC apart from cost which should always be considered when assessing the capability of candidate contractors during the selection process, by assisting contractors in improving their attributes in line with clients' preferences and by facilitating Singapore construction clients and researchers to develop a contractor selection system capable of assessing multiple attributes of the candidate contractors so that the risk of the project failure due to the selection of an inappropriate contractor is minimized.