Capitalising Experiential Knowledge for Guiding Construction Procurement Selection

Capitalising useful knowledge for construction procurement selection (CPS) decisions would provide a valuable asset to client organisations, as the successful/unsuccessful experience would help decision-makers avoid the occurrence of similar errors and ensure the most suitable procurement system is employed for a construction project. As a result, there is a need to examine the potential for developing a knowledge management model to capture and reuse experiential knowledge to guide CPS decisions. This paper begins by identifying a suitable approach for managing CPS knowledge. This is followed by a discussion of the knowledge required for CPS decision support. A prototype knowledge-management model is developed, using the Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) approach, and a mechanism for the retrieval and reuse of knowledge for guiding CPS decisions is elucidated. The results indicate that CBR is a suitable tool for formulating the procurement selection parameters and selecting a suitable procurement system for a construction project. This is primarily because the CBR approach is flexible enough to allow closely matching historic cases to be retrieved as well as enabling the decision-maker to adapt the proposed solution based on the predominant characteristics of the client, project and external environment pertinent to the current project.