Decision-Making over the Project Life Cycle: An Analytical Hierarchy Approach

Abstract

Modern project management decisions are made in an environment often characterized by complexity, need for flexibility, and inclusion of a decision-maker's subjectivity. Typical project management, private or public, involves making decisions on the allocation of resources, project selection, choice of project managers, bid evaluation, vendor selection, and so forth, in an efficient and timely manner. In this paper, we illustrate how these kinds of decisions can be analyzed via a powerful researchbased, multicriteria decision-making technique, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP). Using AHP, the decision problems are delineated into hierarchies in the form of goals, criteria, and alternatives for pairwise comparisons using Expert Choice® software. The judgments are further synthesized to provide ranking of the alternatives for the best choice.

Knowledge Model for Integrated Construction Project Management

“…Mian et al (1999) show the main decision problems related to project management to be resource allocation, prioritising the project portfolio, selection of managers, budget evaluation and selection of sales persons. Mota et al (2008) present a model for supporting project managers to focus on the main tasks of a project network using a multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA) approach.…”

Model for Integrated Project Management

“…Mian and Dai (1999) show the main decision problems related to project management to be resource allocation, prioritising the project portfolio, selection of managers, budget evaluation and selection of salespersons. Mota et al (2008) present a model for supporting project managers to focus on the main tasks of a project network using a multiple criteria decision aid (MCDA) approach.…”

The social and physical vulnerability assessment of old texture against earthquake (case study: Fahadan district in Yazd City)

“…AHP can be used in making decisions that are complex, unstructured, and contain multiple attributes. The decisions that are described by these criteria do not fit in a linear framework; they contain both physical and psychological elements (Nataraj 2005;Mian and Dai 1999). Saaty in his book, Decision making for leaders, mentions AHP as a method of breaking down a complex, unstructured situation into its component parts; arranging these parts, or judgments on the relative importance of each variable; and synthesizing the judgments to determine which variables have the highest priority and should be acted upon to influence the outcome of the situation (Saaty 1990).…”