Decision Support Systems (DSS) in Construction Tendering Processes

TL;DR

This paper reviews the use of Decision Support Systems (DSS) in construction tendering, highlighting current practices, applications, components, and issues in paper-based and web-based processes across various regions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of DSS applications in construction tendering, including regional practices, system components, and challenges, offering insights for future improvements.

Findings

DSS enhances transparency and decision quality in tendering.

Web-based tendering processes offer increased efficiency and accessibility.

Current issues include bias, inconsistency, and technical challenges.

Abstract

The successful execution of a construction project is heavily impacted by making the right decision during tendering processes. Managing tender procedures is very complex and uncertain involving coordination of many tasks and individuals with different priorities and objectives. Bias and inconsistent decision are inevitable if the decision-making process is totally depends on intuition, subjective judgement or emotion. In making transparent decision and healthy competition tendering, there exists a need for flexible guidance tool for decision support. Aim of this paper is to give a review on current practices of Decision Support Systems (DSS) technology in construction tendering processes. Current practices of general tendering processes as applied to the most countries in different regions such as United States, Europe, Middle East and Asia are comprehensively discussed. Applications of Web-based tendering processes is also summarised in terms of its properties. Besides that, a summary of Decision Support System (DSS) components is included in the next section. Furthermore, prior researches on implementation of DSS approaches in tendering processes are discussed in details. Current issues arise from both of paper-based and Web-based tendering processes are outlined. Finally, conclusion is included at the end of this paper.