Framework for evaluating quality performances of subcontractors: Case of Turkish contractors

Success of a construction project mainly depends on the performances of the subcontractors. Thus, general contractors should be very careful when selecting their subcontractors. Turkish contractors are active in international markets, where competition is fierce. This study aims to provide general contractors, who predominantly operate in international markets, with a practical and user-friendly subcontractor quality performance measurement framework. The methodology of this study has two main phases, pre-survey and survey stages. The pre-survey stage aims to identify the most important key performance indicators (KPIs), which can be used to develop a framework for measuring the quality performances of candidate subcontractors. For this purpose, an extensive literature review and a questionnaire survey among 40 large scale Turkish contractors were conducted. In the survey stage, the performance measurement framework was developed using the group decision on the weights of the most important KPIs obtained from the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) calculations. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with the target users of the proposed performance measurement framework to construct the comparison matrices and thereby determine the weights of these KPIs. The proposed framework can be used by Turkish contractors to measure the quality performances of subcontractor candidates in an objective, systematic and structured manner.