Project MA Case study of potential impact of subjective decision making on construction performance

The construction industry has a poor performance record (on time, on budget, and meeting owner expectation) This paper proposes that the reason for poor construction performance is a lack of performance information and poor practices, such as user and designer subjective decision making and resulting attempted control of the contractor. The paper introduces the Information Measurement Theory (IMT) to explain the hypothesis. IMT is the measurement of information to minimize the risk of non-performance. IMT states that the owner's subjective expertise and decision making as a factor affecting the level of construction performance. The hypothesis was tested using the Performance Information Procurement System (PIPS) on the procurement of the $2.96 million Bridgerland Academic Training Centre (ATC) for the State of Utah's Division of Facilities Construction Management (DFCM). The artificial intelligent (AI), information based PIPS, was run two ways; selection with biased subjectivity, similar to current low bid processes, and selection without biased subjectivity. Unlike other processes, PIPS minimizes the decision making and subjective bias of the owner's representatives. The procurement test at Brdgerland ATC provides a comparison between a minimized bias selection vs. a user agency's subjective decision making prioritisation. The user then quantifies the differential based on past construction performance and the results of the information based procurement. The results of the information based system were successful. Although the conclusions are preliminary and based on one case study, the results are in agreement with other ongoing tests. The research paper describes the development of the hypothesis to minimize subjectivity, the test of the hypothesis, the results, conclusions and recommendations.