Technical Papers
Apr 19, 2021

Bidding Decision-Support Model for Construction Projects Based on Projection Pursuit Learning Method

Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 147, Issue 7

Abstract

The decision of whether or not to bid is a crucial task for contractors in the construction industry because multiple attributes with the features of uncertainty and ambiguity can enhance the complexity and difficulty of decision-making. Meanwhile, traditional methods for bidding decisions primarily depend on experience and the subjective evaluation of decision-makers, and it is difficult to develop a more reliable model through data-driven techniques when the historical bidding data is limited. Therefore, this paper proposes a bidding decision-support model for construction projects using the projection pursuit learning method (PPLM), which can explain the characteristic rules in the bidding of contractors through the digging of information of previous bids and help one to make a reasonable and effective decision for bidding a new project. Finally, a case study is provided to demonstrate the applicability of the novel model. The results indicate that the method developed based on the training set can correctly classify 10 testing projects and has a better performance in fitting and predicting the accuracy of bidding decisions when compared with other approaches.

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Data Availability Statement

Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to sincerely thank the Science Foundation of Sichuan University (Grant No. 2018hhs-54) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72002152). We also appreciate the original data support from Sonmez and Sözgen’s (2017) study.

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Go to Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 147Issue 7July 2021

History

Received: Jul 21, 2020
Accepted: Dec 23, 2020
Published online: Apr 19, 2021
Published in print: Jul 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Sep 19, 2021

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Authors

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Xinli Zhang [email protected]
Professor, Dept. of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Sichuan Univ., Chengdu 610064, China. Email: [email protected]
Masters Student, Dept. of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Sichuan Univ., Chengdu 610064, China. Email: [email protected]
Masters Student, Dept. of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Sichuan Univ., Chengdu 610064, China. Email: [email protected]
Yuan Chen, A.M.ASCE [email protected]
Associate Professor, College of Management and Economics, Tianjin Univ., Tianjin 300072, China (corresponding author). Email: [email protected]

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