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Department of Construction Management

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https://hdl.handle.net/10217/100390
These digital collections include theses, dissertations, and faculty publications from the Department of Construction Management. A history of the department prepared in celebration of its 60th anniversary in 2006, Celebrating the Past, Building the Future: A Historical Perspective of Construction Education at Colorado State University, can be found in University Publications.

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Browsing Department of Construction Management by Subject "analytic hierarchy process"

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    Bid or no bid decision making tool using analytic hierarchy process
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Akalp, Duygu, author; Ozbek, Mehmet E., advisor; Senior, Bolivar, committee member; Atadero, Rebecca A., committee member
    In today's competitive business environment, every construction company confronts a decision-making dilemma and must decide whether to bid or not bid on a project(s) or which project(s) to bid on among candidates. Even though the decision-makers come to the conclusion with different judgments, a final evaluation always requires putting different factors into consideration and contemplating the ups and downs of a project. Therefore, bid or no bid decision is complex and crucial for construction companies. The complexity comes from the consideration of many intangible and tangible factors in the decision-making process (Mohanty 1992). Decision-making is hard because it requires a decision-maker to construct a structured thinking to include many unknown, yet complex variables and compare them simultaneously. Decision-making is crucial because poorly made bidding decisions could cause severe and irrevocable problems. For example, not bidding a favorable project could result in lost opportunities for companies to make profit, improve contractor's strength in the industry and gain a long-term relationship with a new client. On the other hand, bidding a project that actually does not fit the company's profile requires a lot of time, effort, and commitment without a favorable outcome (Ahmad 1990, Wanous et al. 2003). Given that "competitive bidding" is the most common bidding method in the construction industry among others (e.g., negotiated contracts, package deals, private finance initiative), investigating bidding strategies has been a focal point by researchers (Harris et al. 2006). Furthermore, more than 100 key factors that influence bidding decisions have been determined to date since the mid-1950s. Simultaneously, to expedite the process, numerous decision-making models have been proposed. Despite the excessive availability of the factors and decision-making models, the facilitation rate of the subsidiary tools in the evaluation process in the construction industry is very little. According to a survey by Ahmad & Minkarah (1988), only 11.1 percent of the construction companies use a decision making tool in order to come to a bid or not bid conclusion in the United States. The ultimate purpose of this study is to develop a practical decision-making tool to assist decision makers in the construction industry to select the most appropriate projects to bid on using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Based on the collected demographic information (e.g., sector, size, type), the combined importance weights of the construction professionals are also presented in the study. Finally, the statistically significant differences between different groups of construction companies in how much weight they assign to a given bid/no bid decision factor is investigated. In reaching the abovementioned purpose, the following questions are addressed: • What are the most common key factors that influence bid/no bid decisions? • How can different judgments from different decision-makers be combined into one final decision? • How differently the construction companies in the United States (US) value the key factors that are commonly utilized to make bid/no bid decisions? The validation of the bid/no bid decision-making tool was performed based on two participants' responses; and the tool provided accurate results for one of the evaluations. Because of insufficient response rate to the validation process, it cannot be concluded that the bid/no bid decision-making tool is validated; however the results of the participants point out the need for further research. The results showed that the compliance with the business plan and location of the project factors were found statistically significantly different for the "Contractor Type" classification. On the contrary, none of the key factors was found statistically significantly different for the "Contractor Sector" groups. For the "Contractor Size" classification, the compliance with the business plan factor was found statistically significantly different. The Group AHP approach allows construction companies to come with a combined bidding judgment instead of using the tool individually. As a major finding of this study is that, the contractors grouped under each construction classifications (i.e., Contractor Type, Contractor Sector and Contractor Size) put more value on the overall firm related-internal factors than the overall project related-external factors based on the Group AHP results. It is also found that the project duration and project size key factors have the lowest weights for all contractor classification groups. This study contributes to the construction engineering and management body of knowledge by providing an user friendly decision-making tool to be used in deciding whether to bid or not bid on a project or which project(s) to bid on and advancing the current state of the knowledge on the different weights/values given to the factors by construction companies with different demographics.
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    ItemOpen Access
    Determining the items that structure bridge management components and their relative weights
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2012) Johnson, Joshua F., author; Ozbek, Mehmet Egemen, advisor; Clevenger, Caroline, committee member; Atadero, Rebecca, committee member; Chen, Suren, committee member
    Ensuring the optimal allocation of available resources between competing bridges is difficult, especially when considering a combination of factors such as continual age related deterioration, ever-increasing traffic demands, and limited resources to address preservation and improvement needs. Optimally allocating funding is crucial since bridges are an essential and expensive component of transportation networks. Bridge Management Systems (BMSs) are commonly used tools that aid managers and decision makers in establishing methods for optimizing available resources and determining how to distribute funds between competing bridges. Recently, NCHRP Synthesis 397 Bridge Management Systems for Transportation Agency Decision Making investigated how transportation agencies are using BMSs and the current state of bridge management practices. The report identified concerns of inadequacy and ineffectiveness with bridge management practices that base decisions solely on single value assessments such as Pontis' Bridge Health Index or the Sufficiency Rating, as found in the federally mandated National Bridge Inspection Standards. Given the critiques in the NCHRP report and other literature related to bridge management, it is evident there exists a need to pursue and develop alternative bridge management practices and systems. The overall purpose of this research is to investigate the concept of isolating the items used to make up a single rating or index in an effort to categorize them under distinct bridge management components such as structural condition, impact on public, and hazard resistance. Each bridge management component has a defined objective as follows: • Structural Condition - accurately access the structural adequacy of a bridge. • Impact on Public - evaluate how bridge attributes affect the traveling public. • Hazard Resistance - evaluate how bridge attributes and external factors affect the vulnerability of a bridge concerning the probability of an extreme event as well as the probability of failure during that event. The specific objectives of this research are (i) to identify the appropriate items that make up each of the aforementioned components and (ii) to determine the relative importance of those items as represented by weighting factors. To achieve these objectives, the researcher conducted a two-part survey seeking input from key bridge management personnel from State DOTs, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), and other industry professionals and experts. The first part of the survey identified the appropriate items and the second part determined the relative importance of those items using a mathematical method called the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The primary contribution of this research is to provide bridge management engineers and decision-makers with effective bridge management components, with well-defined objectives and related items, which clearly identify and distinguish differences in bridge attributes that may go unnoticed when using a single rating or index. This will especially be useful for State DOTs and local agencies, like the Wyoming Department of Transportation, from which the motivation for this research was adapted, who are developing BMSs and methods customized to their particular needs. Upon establishing the bridge management components, by determining the items that make up the components and their relative weights, transportation agencies may utilize them in a variety of ways to conduct multi-criteria decision analyses that complement their current bridge management practices, which in turn may better illustrate the operation of bridges in their system. The total number of respondents was 47, of which 32 were from 29 different State transportation agencies. Of the 47 participants, only 27 contributed to the second part of the survey. A major finding of this research was a result of several participant remarks about with quantifying preservation and maintenance demands through the addition of a fourth bridge management component. The preservation and maintenance component encompasses items that are bridge elements, but may not contribute to the structural capacity of a bridge. Given the degree of influence of adding a fourth component, further research is recommend to confirm these findings and conclusions with a refined two-part survey similar to this research study and possibly interviews or focus groups.