Integrated FAHP-FDEMATEL for Determining Causal Relationships in Construction Crew Productivity Modeling

Construction crew productivity is affected by the motivation of the crew performing given activities and by situational/contextual factors forming the dynamic construction environment. The literature lacks a comprehensive analysis of causal relationships between crew motivation and situational/contextual factors for dynamic modelling of crew productivity. The contributions of this paper are 1) identifying a set of criteria for performing expert weight assignment for heterogenous group experts in productivity research, 2) proposing an integrated fuzzy analytic hierarchy process–fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (FAHP-FDEMATEL) approach that provides a systematic, structured method for determining causal relationship mapping between factors affecting crew productivity, and 3) proposing an approach for identifying cause-and-effect groups amongst the situational/contextual factors and crew motivation, which can further be used to formulate strategic productivity improvement solutions. The proposed methodology is demonstrated using a case study on an actual industrial construction project in Alberta, Canada.