Abstract:
At present, in Bangladesh, most of the companies arc using two step evaluation
methods for awarding contracts to contractors for large construction projects. In the
first step of this method, screenings of contractors arc done on simple pass fail basis.
They must go through this step to be eligible for the second phase. A simple kind of
weighted sum model (WSM) is used here for this decision making. The choice of
selection criteria and their weights are dependent on the subjective judgment of the
project owner. A thresh-hold value is fixed by the owner and a simple pass-fail
method is used. Those contractors crossing this threshold value are qualified for
going into the second phase. This first step is also known as prequalifieation
evaluation of contractors and it ensures that only fimls with adequate experience,
resources, qualifications and expertise are selected to tender. The problem with this
method is deciding the weight of the respective criteria, something for which AHP
does provide a better solution. In the second step, pre qualified contractors from the
first step are assessed of their capacity in more detail. This assessment is performed
to ensure adequate, experience; resources, qualifications and expertise available exist
in the selected firm. Then the lowest qualified bidder is awarded with the contract.
The new challenge in the field of Project Management may be considered like
dealing with the number of alternatives that have grown dramatically over the last
few decades. Managers have to deal more with conflicting goals nowadays. In case
of construction projects, selecting the best contractor among many contractors may
be considered as one of this particular type. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) is
an efficient tool for dealing with these .types of multi-criteria decision making
problems. AI-IP is famous for its ability to incorporate both the quantitative and
qualitative factors simultaneously. In this presented paper, a case study about subcontractor
prequalifieation evaluation (an evaluation problem) has been performed
using the traditional approach and the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Later,
sensitivity analysis was carried out by changing the comparison matrix to show the
greater capability and flexibility of AI-IP over traditional approach.
