Mak, S W K (1992) Risk management in construction: A study of subjective judgments. PhD thesis, London, External, UK.
Abstract
Tendering is the normal means by which contractors in the construction industry solicit business. Bidding models have been devised to help contractor bid for jobs but these tend to have limited applications because they generally treat uncertainties stochastically (randomly). Contractors have used to react to these uncertainties by rules of thumb and heuristics. However, research findings by cognitive psychologists in early 1970s that subjective judgments are fallacious have aroused much hot debate. The debate has centred around the so-called normative theory of decision making and the methodology of performing the studies. On the one hand, it was argued that uncertainties in the construction industry were the result of its being a humanistic system and therefore subjective judgments made under uncertainty were inevitable. On the other hand, if professional education in the construction industry has some usefulness in training its practitioners to make sensible decisions then there should be less evidence of bias and fallacies as described by the psychologists (Hypothesis 1). Empirical studies done with domain specific subjects with domain specific questions supported this hypothesis. In recent years, risk management in construction has become popular and been accepted as a means to tackle some of the uncertainties inherent in construction works. The modelling of the perception of risk is one of the most crucial steps in the whole risk management process; and has mostly been done by a 3-point triangular model. Fuzzy sets theory was introduced with an intention of modelling the risk perceptions of construction professionals. Five linguistic expressions were devised to test the consistency of these perceptions. It was hypothesized that there was consensus among construction professionals with respect to the perception of a selected number of linguistic terms to express uncertainty and that fuzzy sets theory modelled these perceptions better than the traditional methods (Hypothesis 2). It was found, empirically, that there was high consensus among the subjects as to the meaning of these terms; and that the use of the traditional 3-point triangular model led to judgmental bias.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | bias; bidding; decision making; education; professional; risk management; tendering; training; uncertainty |
| Index terms: | construction industry, modelling, construction professional, empirical study, construction work, risk management, fuzzy set, heuristic, judgment, bidding, methodology, decision-making, bias, practitioner, evidence, meaning, risk perception |
| Subjects: | risk assessment, dispute resolution, professional development, probability and distributions, sociology, decision analysis, industry analysis, evaluation and assessment methods, practitioner, operations management, bidding, analytical methods, research methods, decision-making and optimization, environmental hazards |
| Topics: | Legal Issues, Risk Management, Procurement, Sustainability, Project Management, Engineering Principles, Roles and Professions, Research Practice, Information Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTA |
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