Decision Support Model for Contractor Selection

The construction and infrastructure industries in Egypt have recently experienced huge growth, which of course requires methodical planning, full feasibility studies, and wise selections of project executors' teams, including engineering design offices, management agencies, and contracting firms. Consequently, to guarantee achieving the predetermined project designs and objectives, a careful assessment of the incorporating contractor company must be carried out.

Improper contractor selection leads to several problems throughout the project delivery phase, including inadequate quality and delays in the expected project time, which results in cost overruns. Rather, it also sometimes results in suspending the project and failing to complete it. Moreover, in most public and governmental projects, in accordance with law 182/2018, the responsible employee is forced to choose the lowest-priced bid regardless of any other considerations, only passing the project's minimum technical score defined by the appropriate authority, and this is illogical and must be reconsidered.

In order to find a solution to these problems, the following steps were taken in this paper: (1) Forty-eight factors affecting contractor selection were identified through surveying; (2) the seven most important factors were selected based on the fuzzy Delphi technique (FDT); and (3) competitive contractors were prioritised at the pre-bidding stage for the construction project by utilising the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) combined with the analytic network process (ANP).

Seven of the forty-eight factors were selected using the fuzzy Delphi technique, and to calculate their relative weights, AHP and ANP were combined to obtain the most important variables affecting contractor selection. Next, a model user interface for picking contractors was developed to make it easier for project owners and managers to apply. To fully understand how the model functions, a realistic case study involving four bidders competing for the contract has been included.

Since government agencies oblige decision-makers to select the lowest-priced bidder, this model can be used during the tendering process's prequalification stage to ensure that all potential contractors are qualified while including the most influential criteria from the Egyptian construction market's perspective.