An information framework for evaluating international construction projects

Construction companies depend on projects to remain in business. The projects which a company decides to pursue will impact the direction of the company, the resources the company needs, the risks it incurs, and the rewards it obtains. The decision to pursue or not to pursue a project has received little attention from the research community. This thesis describes an exploratory investigation into the project evaluation decision made by construction companies pursuing international projects. The investigation first defines the characteristics of the project evaluation decision currently performed within the construction industry. The evaluation decision was found to rely heavily on intuition of the construction executives and was performed in an unstructured manner. To improve this decision, the Organization Based Information Architecture (OBIA) was developed. It identifies the factors which impact the decision to pursue or not to pursue a particular project opportunity. The OBIA identifies five generic categories of information needed to effectively evaluate a project. These are: organizations, commitments, processes, environments, and facilities. Each of these categories is decomposed to identify additional information needed. To further improve the project evaluation decision, a process was defined which decomposed the decision into five main subprocesses. These subprocesses are: (1) assess project feasibility, (2) determine ability to perform, (3) assess competitive advantages, (4) determine project risks, and (5) select projects to pursue. Detailed questions for each process are presented. The models presented in this research were developed through interviews with ten construction industry executives. These models were then tested by analyzing ten international project evaluation decisions. From the interviews and case studies, it was determined that the OBIA contains the information which affected the decisions made by the companies evaluating the projects.