Multi-criteria Decision-Making Technique for Critical Risk Factors Identification of Construction Projects in Saudi Arabia

The infrastructure in Saudi Arabia is experiencing rapid development through the greater participation of the private and the government investment in the sectors of housing, transport and energy and respective related industries. The construction industry is facing with various risks that lead to poor performance, increase of expenses and tardiness of the delivery and even failure of the project. Therefore, to succeed in construction projects, the potential risks should be identified, analyzed, managed and should be controlled. One of the most important steps in risk management process is to identify the critical risk factors of a project. In the present study, the critical risk factors (CRFs) of Saudi Arabia construction projects are identified from construction organization control point of view and group into internal and external risk. The risk factors are further categorized as technical or management-related risk for efficient risk management. The advanced MCDMs methods, AHP-GD are employed in a hybrid fashion to identify the critical risk factors for risk assessment of construction projects. The proposed identification framework of CRFs for risk assessment of construction projects in this work will help in improving the project quality, cost and schedule performance and will help in controlling the risk in the construction projects of Saudi Arabia. It is concluded from the study that the most critical risk factor is awarding the construction projects contract to poor construction knowledge and unexperienced contractor.