Fuzzy decision model for construction contractor´s selection in Egypt: Tender phase

Selecting an appropriate contractor is essential for the success of any construction project. A tender procedure should facilitate selection of a reliable contractor taking into consideration many criteria. This paper presents a systematic prequalification and performance procedure, based on multi criteria decision making (MCDM) that is Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) with Fuzzy Set Theory. This process uses an algorithm to handle the inconsistencies in the fuzzy preference relation when pair-wise comparison judgments are used with linguistic assessment or exact assessment of performance of the contractors on qualitative or quantitative criterion, respectively. A questionnaire survey was conducted, containing 34 factors affecting cost estimation for contractor selection during tender decision. Finally, a real case study and an application example for a contractor selection problem were provided to the construction industry to demonstrate the implementation process of the proposed method.