Risk Management Methodology for Green Building Construction Projects Using Fuzzy-Based Multi-criteria Decision-Making

Abstract

Construction projects usually encounter a significant number of unforeseen events referred to as project risks. Those risks typically incur a noteworthy impact on the overall project duration, cost as well as quality. Therefore, a systematic means of construction project risk planning, analysis and management is required to ensure those negative impacts are brought to a minimum, especially in the case of green building construction given that it is a relatively new field of application in Egypt. However, a great deficiency in proper record keeping is experienced in Egyptian construction projects in general, which increases the complexity of the construction and diminishes possibilities of innovation. Accordingly, the current risk management procedure is mostly reactive, qualitative and involves a great deal of uncertainties associated with the subjective data collection methods. To overcome those limitations, this paper presents a predictive risk management framework that identifies, clusters and evaluates the most important risks in the Egyptian green construction industry. A novel Fuzzy-based Multi-Criteria Decision-Making methodology is utilized as part of this study to capture the uncertainties in the industry experts’ opinions, as well as consider a degree of indeterminacy to their decisions. The application of the aforementioned methodology results in the quantification of the priority level of each of the identified project risks that in turn suggests a risk management strategy to each individual risk. The risk planning procedure proposed in this study was applied to Egyptian construction projects and resulted in a significant declination in money losses and time-related delays, and accordingly, a reduction in the level of disputes between project participants and stakeholders.