Reinvigorating the process of contractor selection in adaptive reuse projects: a novel decision-making and evaluation paradigm

Adaptive reuse projects reconfigure and revitalize existing buildings to enact an alternative purpose, diverging from the original design intent. The study introduces a novel decision-making framework that adopts the Ordinary Priority Approach (OPA) based on the integrated Relative Performance Index (RPI) for selecting and appraising contractors in adaptive reuse projects. Current methodologies lack criteria and assessment approaches tailored to the prototypical challenges of adaptive reuse projects, compelling special knowledge, skills, structural design considerations, sustainable methods, and prudent resource conservation. Accordingly, this research aims to 1) Identify and evaluate primary Contractor Selection Criteria (CSc) and their sub-criteria influencing contractor choice for adaptive reuse; 2) Rank sub-CSc using the Relative Importance Index (RII); 3) Assign weights to sub-CSc via the OPA, and 4) Examine the contractors' performance using the RPI method. By offering this framework, this paper enhances and empowers decision-making processes to opt for contractors with the requisite expertise and competencies for successful adaptive reuse projects, filling a crucial knowledge gap. Six contractors were selected to assess the feasibility and validate the proposed framework. Among the chosen contractors, numbers 2, 4, and 5 exhibited significant performance concerning the top-ranked sub-CSc, registering RPI values of 1, 0.88, and 0.86, respectively.