| Summary: | The construction industry is the leading contributor to Malaysia's economic
growth. In order to ensure its optimum level of contribution, the management of a
construction project needs to be both systematic as well as effective. The
management of a construction project comprises the utilization of multiple
resources such as financial, human capital, time and raw material. It is therefore
important to efficiently manage these multitude of resources to guarantee the
successful completion of a construction project. The objective of this thesis is to
develop a framework to facilitate the management of a construction project. The
framework is made of three phases which are Planning and Scheduling,
Monitoring, and Evaluating. The Planning and Scheduling phase determines the
cost and the potential risks of a project. The monitoring phase aims to monitor
expenditure and work performance against the schedule. Finally, the evaluating
phase which deals in deciding whether subsequent activity can either proceed after
each completed activity, or requires modification or even needs to be redeveloped.
In order to test the applicability of the framework, a web-based
Decision Support System prototype, which is based on the combination of the
Monte Carlo Simulation and Analytic Hierarchical Process (ARP) has been
developed. The purpose of the prototype is to be used for budget planning process
and work planning, and to support complex decision making. Interviews and
questionnaires approaches have been used during the data collection process. The
effectiveness of the prototype is being tested using the method of numerical testing
and system testing on the user's perception. Usability study is done by distributing
the questionnaires to the respondents who are directly involved in the management
of construction projects. The result shows that 70.26% of the respondents are
satisfied with the prototype. In conclusion, the management of construction
projects requires an on-line Project Management System with som~ features of
Decision Support System embedded with appropriate methods such as Monte
Carlo Simulation and ARP. The system can assist the management to perform
their tasks more efficiently and effectively regardless of location and time
constraints.
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