Using Electre III to aid the choice of housing construction process within structural engineering

The Electre III model may be considered as a decision-aid technique suited to the appraisal of complex civil/structural engineering projects. This conclusion is based on an assessment that the model permits a general ordering of alternatives, even when individual pairs of options remain uncompared where there is insufficient information to distinguish between them. Also, the technique is capable of dealing with the mix of both quantitative and qualitative information obtained within an engineering project appraisal. Electre III is applied to the evaluation of 11 alternative multi-family housing systems on the basis of 7 criteria covering labour, material and energy demand. Using this case study, the benefits of Electre III over other decision models in the selection process concerned are emphasized.