Procurement

About: Procurement is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 25669 publications have been published within this topic receiving 334145 citations.

An Application of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for Sustainable Procurement of Construction Equipment: Multicriteria-Based Decision Framework for Malaysia

Abstract: Sustainable procurement is an emerging theme in the construction industry across the globe. However, organizations in the construction industry often encounter impediments in improving environmental performance in construction projects, especially in procurement. Besides its other facets, procurement of construction equipment is inherited to be capital-intensive and vital for managing environmental concerns associated with built environment projects. In this regard, selection criteria in such procurement processes are generally supportive of considering cost and engineering specifications as key parameters. However, sustainability apprehensions in today’s Malaysian construction industry have mounted pressure on industry professionals to rethink their equipment acquisition strategies. The notion of green or sustainable procurement is still infancy for the Malaysian construction industry and facing challenges for embedding it in the current procurement practices. This research aims to address these apprehensions by considering six main criteria, namely, life cycle cost (LCC), performance (P), system capability (SC), operational convenience (OC), environmental impact (EI), and social benefits (SBs), and their 38 subcriteria towards procurement of sustainable construction equipment. A multicriteria-based equipment selection framework on the triple bottom line of sustainability in the context of the Malaysian construction industry has been developed and tested. The application of analytical hierarchy process (AHP) established the sustainable procurement index with a consistent sensitivity analysis results. As such, the proposed procurement index shall help decision-makers in the process of the acquisition of sustainable construction equipment in Malaysia.

How Much GPS Data Do We Need

Abstract: With the growing prevalence of communications technologies, GPS, and the mobile internet, more and more real-time location information is collected by private companies and marketed for retail. This body of data offers transportation agencies potential opportunities to improve operations, but it also presents unique challenges. This article proposes a hybrid data framework to utilize real-time, GPS-based, point-speed data from mobile sources to augment previous investments in existing fixed sensors. In addition, a methodology is described for data quality monitoring crucial for any transportation agency considering the use of commercially available probe data. In order to answer questions that arise in conducting data procurement and sensor deployment strategies for transportation agencies, a systematic analysis of the performance trade-offs among a menu of data sources is described. The results presented in this article were generated from the first procurement of streaming probe data from the private sector conducted on behalf of the California Department of Transportation and executed at UC Berkeley. Third-party data were incorporated with loop detector data and travel times were estimated within the bounds of driver variability. This achievement was repeated over multiple weeks and multiple congested freeway sites. In one rural area where active loops did not exist, operational travel time performance measures were obtained. While penetration rates for GPS-based probe data are now suitable for travel time estimation on selected corridors, data fusion makes possible the effective use of data from multiple sources or providers; when data from multiple sources are fused, superior results are obtained.