Selecting an Appropriate Configuration in a Construction Project Using a Hybrid Multiple Attribute Decision Making and Failure Analysis Methods

To successfully complete a project, selecting the most appropriate construction method and configuration is critical. There are, however, plenty of challenges associated with these complex decision-making processes. Clients require projects with the desired cost, time, and quality, so contractors should trade-off project goals through project configuration. To address this problem, in this study, an integrated FTA-DFMEA approach is proposed that implements the integrated AHP-TOPSIS method to improve construction project configuration. The proposed approach applies quality management techniques and MADM methods concurrently for the first time to improve construction project configuration considering project risks, costs and quality. At first, the Client's requirements and market feedback are considered to identify potential failures in fulfilling project goals, and an integrated AHP-TOPSIS is used to select the most critical potential failure. Then fault tree analysis is used to indicate minimal paths. An inverse search in the operational model is performed to determine relevant tasks and identify defective project tasks based on WBS. Afterward, failure modes and effect analysis are applied to identify failure modes, and an integrated AHP-TOPSIS is used to rank failure modes and select the most critical one. Then Corrective actions are carried out for failure modes based on their priority, and project configuration is improved. This study considers construction resource suppliers with different policies, delivery lead times, warranty costs, and purchasing costs. Moreover, redundancy allocation and different configuration systems such as series and parallel are taken into account based on the arrangement and precedence of tasks. Finally, a case study of a building construction project is presented to test the viability of the proposed approach. The results indicate that the proposed approach is applicable as a time-efficient and powerful tool in the improvement of construction project configuration, which provides the optimal output by considering various criteria with respect to the client's requirements and contractor's obligations. Moreover, the algorithm provides various options for the contractor to improve the implementation of construction projects and better respond to challenges when fulfilling project goals.