Centralized construction contractor selection considering past performance of contractors: a case of India

Analyzing the contractor selection procedures of government departments in various countries and in the Rural Development Department (RDD) in India, this paper bring out several weaknesses of the present contractor selection procedure. It suggests the inclusion of three new selection attributes and the adoption of a centralized contractor evaluation process. The suggested attributes are: time quoted to complete the project, warranty period quoted, and past performance score of the contractor. To obtain the past performance score of a contractor, the paper uses a fuzzy multi-attribute utility scoring technique that allows consideration of qualitative/quantitative and enabling/inhibiting character of the relevant attributes. To solve the resulting multi-attribute–multi-objective decision-making problem, the paper proposes a fuzzy binary goal programming model. When tested with the existing contractor selection procedure for three past projects in RDD, the model yields the same results as those taken by RDD in the past, confirming the credibility of the model. When tested with the suggested procedure, the model yields much superior results.