Hartmann, A; Ling, F Y Y and Tan, J S H (2009) Relative importance of subcontractor selection criteria: Evidence from Singapore. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 135(9), pp. 826-832. ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Subcontractors carry out a large portion of the work done in construction projects. Thus, selecting the right subcontractor essentially contributes to the project's success. We designed a choice-based conjoint experiment to examine the relative importance of four criteria in the subcontractor selection process of main contractors from Singapore: Price, technical know-how, quality, and cooperation. Although main contractors adopt a multicriteria selection process and perceive all four criteria to be important for their choice decision, the actual choice situation reveals that price is still by far the most important selection criterion, followed by quality, cooperation, and technical know-how. Main contractors are not willing to compromise on price but accept a lower performance of a known subcontractor on the remaining criteria.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | construction management; contractors; quantitative analysis; Singapore; subcontractors |
| Index terms: | experiment, relative importance, cooperation, construction project, subcontractor, evidence, Singapore, quantitative analysis, subcontractor selection, main contractor |
| Subjects: | organization, Geography, risk assessment, production management, practitioner, evaluation and assessment methods, data collection methods, data analysis and analytics, psychology |
| Topics: | Supply Chain Management, Organizational Design, Geographical Context, Risk Management, Project Management, Roles and Professions, Research Practice |
| Descriptive scope: | 5 PCTEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here