Multicriteria support for construction bidding

While profit maximization is one important objective in this decision domain, other objectives are important as well. This paper discusses multiple criteria and their respective objectives in construction bidding, and presents a bidding framework which recommends a pairwise comparison procedure to generate criterion weights and a linear transformation procedure to calculate relative scores for bidding alternatives. This hybrid multicriteria method is illustrated and evaluated using a set of past construction bids. The proposed bidding system is found to yield substantially improved solutions when work volume is highly important relative to expected profit. The corresponding decrease in the profit function is identified, allowing evaluation of expected profit foregone, in order that improved multiattribute functions might be attained.