Partnerships Evaluation for Environmental Sustainability in Construction Projects using ANP

Sustainable development in the construction industry requires contractors to quantitatively reduce adverse environmental impacts on construction sites by every possible way, such as mitigating pollution level and seeking optimum environmental-friendly plans in construction planning, and assessing sustainable options for design and material in construction partnering. Although several quantitative approaches have been put forward and proved to be efficient in selections of the best construction design, plan, and material based on distinguishing the degree of their potential adverse environmental impacts, there is still a research task to develop an effective tool for contractors and clients to conduct sustainability assessment in construction partnering. In this regard, a decision-making model is presented in this paper using Analytic Network Process (ANP) to evaluate the environmental consciousness and performance and sustainable performances of partner candidates such as main contractors and subcontractors in competitive procurement processes of construction projects. To undertake this task, this paper firstly reviews sustainable issues and their characteristics relating to partnerships in construction, which are critical factors to evaluate potential adverse environmental impacts and sustainability of construction partnerships. These sustainable characteristics, as well as other criteria generally used in construction partnership assessment, are then used to structure the decision-making model for evaluating sustainable partnerships by using ANP. The ANP model named GreenPartner can be used by both contractor and clients when it is necessary to evaluate the sustainable partnerships and select the best partner during construction partnering.