Advanced automation or conventional construction process?

The rapidly developing area of construction automation leads construction managers to critically evaluate the feasibility of replacing conventional construction processes by automated systems. This decision requires careful analysis of tangible and intangible factors such as need-based criteria, economic criteria, technological criteria, project specific criteria, and safety/risk criteria. This paper presents a decision making model and a decision support system (DSS) to assist construction managers in systematically evaluating whether to opt for a conventional construction process or an automated system for a given project. The proposed DSS, called AUTOCOP (AUTomation Option evaluation for COnstruction Processes), utilizes the Analytical Hierarchy Method (AHP) to analyze the tangible and the intangible set of criteria involved in the decision problem.