Selecting appropriate structural system: Application of PROMETHEE decision making method

Recent advancements in various structural systems have made the selection of the appropriate structural system for a specific project a challenging decision making process. This process involves different economic and technical criteria representing the availability of experienced technicians and engineers and necessary machinery and construction materials. Economic life cycle, environmental protection related issues, safety of the project site, and vulnerability to natural disasters such as earthquakes are also issues related to the country and location in which the project will be constructed and they should also be addressed in the decision making process. In this paper, “PROMETHEE” multi-criteria decision making technique has been used to consider these criteria in selection of the most appropriate structural system for multi-housing projects. A questioner has been designed to gather engineering judgments and experts opinions about PROMETHEE parameters such as weights of different criteria. The team of experts who has cooperated in this research includes engineers and managers of consulting firms and general contractors who have been involved in the same type of the projects. The results of this study have shown that the proposed methodology can be effectively used in selection of the appropriate structural systems for the case study of this research. This method can also be used for other industrial or commercial building projects while the criteria should be revised with respect to the influencing parameters in those projects.