Expertise-based bid evaluation for construction-contractor selection with generalized comparative linguistic ELECTRE III

• Published in: Automation in construction Vol. 125; p. 103578
• Main Authors: Chen, Zhen-Song, Zhang, Xuan, Rodríguez, Rosa M., Pedrycz, Witold, Martínez, Luis
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier B.V 01.05.2021; Elsevier BV
• Subjects: Appraisals; Bid evaluation; Bids; Construction management; Criteria; Decisions; ELECTRE III; Fuzzy sets; Generalized comparative linguistic expressions; Linguistics; Multiple-criteria decision support; Performance evaluation; Uncertainty; Generalized comparative linguistic expressions; ELECTRE III; Bid evaluation; Construction management; Multiple-criteria decision support
• ISSN: 0926-5805; 1872-7891
• DOI: 10.1016/j.autcon.2021.103578

The process of bid evaluation is subject to indetermination, imprecision, and uncertainty in terms of their alternative-criterion decision appraisals. To address this issue, this paper develops a novel ELECTRE III-based MCGDM approach for bid evaluation, in which generalized comparative linguistic expressions (GCLEs) are used to evaluate bidder performance. The collected GCLEs are further transformed into possibility-distribution-based hesitant fuzzy linguistic-term sets (HFLTSs) to facilitate the qualitative construction of individual expertise. A consensus-reaching process is introduced to promote decisions that are agreed upon by experts and thereby ensure an enhanced state of mutual agreement among the experts. Subsequently, an integrated subjective-objective approach is proposed to calculate criterion weights and to implement an ELECTRE III-based method that incorporates HFLTS possibility distributions, which allows us to treat the indetermination, imprecision, and uncertainty embedded in appraisals of alternative-criterion decisions when evaluating bids. The potential advantages of the proposed approach are validated by a real-life contractor-selection case. •This paper develops a generalized comparative linguistic ELECTRE III frame-work for bid evaluation.•The framework integrates novel expertise characterizations for weighing experts selected for evaluating bids.•This paper establishes a comprehensive criteria system for bid evaluation that includes qualitative and quantitative aspects.•A consensus-reaching process with possibility-distribution-based hesitant fuzzy linguistic information is introduced.•A novel weighting procedure on the basis of distance-based entropy for HFLTS possibility-distribution is presented.