An Integrated Multi-Criteria-Decision-Making Tool for Mechanical Designer Selection

In construction projects, many parties, e.g., owner, design team, general contractor, subcontractors, consultants, suppliers, etc., take part and collaborate. The qualifications of those parties directly affect the success of a construction project. Therefore, those parties should be selected in an objective and systematic way to complete the project successfully. The mechanical design group is an important participant of a design team, whose expertise area is very complicated. The design process of the mechanical group requires multi-disciplinary effort. The technical capability, experience, and communication skills of these parties play a critical role. However, in practice, the selection of the mechanical design team is usually made based on the lowest bid criterion, which may result in additional costs due to working with unqualified, incapable, and insufficient companies. The main objective of this study is to propose an integrated approach, which combines two multi-decision criteria decision-making techniques, to select the most appropriate mechanical design team in construction projects. In the proposed approach, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Complex Proportional Assessment (COPRAS) methods are used together and various conflicting and compromising criteria are considered simultaneously. In this study, the AHP technique is used to calculate the weights of the criteria and the COPRAS method is used to rank the design team alternatives. In order to demonstrate how this approach can be applied to a real life problem, a case study is presented. (c) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.