Group Decision Making for Stochastic Optimization of Time, Cost, and Quality in Construction Projects

Time, cost, and quality are three major competitive objectives of every project, among which creating a balance through optimal resource utilization, results in desirable project performance. To address this issue, as an important concern in the project planning stage, this paper presents a group decision making framework to seek the optimal resource utilization, considering time, cost, and quality simultaneously. The framework, which has the capability of dealing with uncertainty, is the incorporation of the Monte Carlo simulation for stochastic measurements of time and cost, a fuzzy simple additive weighting system for stochastic estimation of quality, and the Borda-Ordered Weighted Averaging method for the group decision making process. In this framework, time, cost, and quality as separate decision makers, which could carry different levels of weight in the decision making process, are able engage their different perceptions of risk and confidence levels. A proposed satisfaction index measures the optimization levels of time, cost, and quality as satisfaction levels of each decision maker. A real project, used as an example of an application, is analyzed to illustrate the use of the framework and demonstrate its capabilities in stochastic optimization of time-cost-quality in construction projects.