PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to introduce a new approach for finding the most appropriate risk allocation among construction contract parties. Although risk allocation is a strategic decision that can greatly affect the cost and time of the project, it is often made based on the personal judgments of employers. That is why owners usually find it a very time-consuming and expensive decision process, while most contractors feel that risk sharing is not done fairly. In this paper, a quantitative model for risk allocation is introduced to fulfill clients’ conflicting expectations in the risk allocation process.Design/methodology/approachBy defining conflicting expectation of owners in the form of three quantitative objectives (lowest cost, maximum reliability and minimum risk exposure), a multi-objective optimization algorithm was developed to select the most appropriate risk allocation. Using experts’ knowledge through fuzzy set theory, a multi-objective decision-making model is developed based on an ant colony optimization algorithm. The proposed model is able to find the optimum risk allocation at the lowest cost and highest reliability while protecting the client against risk exposure within multiple parties projects.FindingsThe proposed model has the ability to select the most appropriate risk allocation in multi-parties projects (such as public–private partnerships) and quantitatively measure the impact of each employer’s choice on project results in the form of cost and time. The results of implementing the proposed model in a case study project revealed that optimum risk allocation requires a balanced attitude, and the transfer of all risks to the other parties will not necessarily lead to the lowest cost. The client should bear more responsibilities in risk management to avoid extreme time delay and cost overrun.Research limitations/implicationsThe proposed model can be implemented in multi-parties projects (such as public–private partnership), while other methods introduced in previous studies can only be used for projects with two party (client and contractor).Practical implicationsBy implementing the proposed model in a real project in this article and comparing its results with previous works, it has been shown that the proposed model has a good performance. Using this model can help clients drastically reduce cost and time and ultimately successfully conclude risk allocation negotiations (which is the most difficult part of any contract negotiation).Originality/valueIn this paper, the risk allocation process is modeled in the form of a multi-objective decision problem. This method helps employers to measure their conflicting goals and choose the most appropriate risk allocation according to their objectives. Also, in this article, the conflicting expectations of the employer in the process of contract negotiations are introduced as three measurable goals, which gives the decision-maker the ability to balance his expectations and not miss an objective. In the final step, an optimization model is developed to select the best option, which can choose the most appropriate party to bear the risk in a short time and among an unlimited number of participants.
