Fuzzy hybrid decision support systems for improving construction competitiveness

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Construction management aims to improve our ability to plan, forecast, control, and evaluate project outcomes, in order to deliver projects that meet their objectives. Decision support systems are an integral part of construction management; they help construction personnel make better, more informed, and faster decisions to improve project outcomes. The challenges in developing decision support systems for construction lie in how to model uncertainties that are due to linguistic expression, and how to develop systems that effectively capture engineering judgment, while at the same time making use of valuable project data. Fuzzy logic is a powerful modeling technique that is specifically designed to handle natural language and approximate reasoning. This research aims to develop one of the fundamental aspects of fuzzy logic to make it more suited to construction applications. It uses a technique called neuro-fuzzy modeling to combine fuzzy logic, expert systems, and artificial neural networks to develop two industrially-relevant decision support systems for construction. Construction bonding is the process by which a bonding company provides a guarantee to a project owner that a contractor will comply with the terms and conditions of a contract. The risk of contractor default is becoming more significant as projects become more complex, resulting in higher bonding standards and larger premiums for bonds. This trend has resulted in reduced competition for projects and increased construction costs, which may limit the number of projects that are constructed and compromise essential services such as our physical infrastructure. This research aims to develop a decision support system to help bonding companies in evaluating the risks in making bonding decisions, to help maintain the availability of bonds to a diversity of contractors at a level that stimulates competition and minimizes construction cost escalation. Another decision support system will be developed to help contractors to improve and optimize construction labour productivity. Labour productivity is one of the most significant uncertainties facing a construction project and one of its largest cost components, making it a critical issue to address.