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Halting decisions for gas pipeline construction projects using AHP: a case study

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Abstract

This paper considers a decision making problem encountered by a natural gas pipeline construction company having a set of ongoing projects and facing unpredictable risks that can result in large deviations from planned schedules. This situation forces the company to consider the decision of halting one or more projects to avoid future losses and to allow for possible reallocation of some of their resources to other ongoing projects. This decision making problem involves different factors and criteria that need to be combined in an organized structure that exploits assessments of experts managing such projects. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is found to be suitable for guiding decisions in this problem. A case study for a major natural gas pipeline construction company in Egypt is presented, where three ongoing projects are considered. The proposed AHP structure, along with collected pairwise comparison scores and calculated priorities, suggests halting one project. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to investigate the effect of changes in the pairwise comparison scores assigned to the main criteria on the final decision. The results and analysis provide some insights regarding the application of the AHP and the relative importance of the factors affecting decisions.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to anonymous reviewers for very useful remarks that helped to improve an earlier version of this paper.

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Correspondence to Tamer F. Abdelmaguid.

Appendix: Pairwise comparison matrices

Appendix: Pairwise comparison matrices

This appendix contains all aggregated pairwise comparison matrices for the presented case study (see Tables 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14).

Table 4 Pairwise comparison matrix for main criteria with respect to the goal (\(\lambda ^{Goal}_{max}=3.031, CR^{Goal}=3.6\%\))
Table 5 Pairwise comparison matrix for the sub-criteria with respect to the criteria governmental procedures (\(\lambda ^{Governmental}_{max}=1.999, CR^{Governmental}=0.1\%\))
Table 6 Pairwise comparison matrix for the sub-criteria with respect to the criteria commercial procedures (\(\lambda ^{Commercial}_{max}=1.999, CR^{Commercial}=0.1\%\))
Table 7 Pairwise comparison matrix for the sub-criteria with respect to the criteria execution environment (\(\lambda ^{Execution}_{max}=3.002, CR^{Execution}=0.2\%\))
Table 8 Pairwise comparison matrix for the alternatives with respect to sub-criteria Sovereign decisions (\(\lambda ^{Sovereign}_{max}=8.593, CR^{Sovereign}=6.0\%\))
Table 9 Pairwise comparison matrix for the alternatives with respect to sub-criteria permits and approvals (\(\lambda ^{Permits}_{max}=8.483, CR^{Permits}=4.9\%\))
Table 10 Pair-wise comparison matrix for the alternatives with respect to sub-criteria Funds (\(\lambda ^{Funds}_{max}=8.32, CR^{Funds}=3.3\%\))
Table 11 Pairwise comparison matrix for the alternatives with respect to sub-criteria compensation (\(\lambda ^{Compensation}_{max}=8.495, CR^{Compensation}=5.0\%\))
Table 12 Pairwise comparison matrix for the alternatives with respect to sub-criteria security conditions (\(\lambda ^{Security}_{max}=8.397, CR^{Security}=4.0\%\))
Table 13 Pairwise comparison matrix for the alternatives with respect to sub-criteria suppliers and contractors commitments (\(\lambda ^{Supplier}_{max}=8.437, CR^{Supplier}=4.5\%\))
Table 14 Pairwise comparison matrix for the alternatives with respect to sub-criteria labor and equipment productivity (\(\lambda ^{Productivity}_{max}=8.422, CR^{Productivity}=4.3\%\))

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Abdelmaguid, T.F., Elrashidy, W. Halting decisions for gas pipeline construction projects using AHP: a case study. Oper Res Int J 19, 179–199 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-016-0277-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12351-016-0277-2

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