Importance of Analytical Hierarchy Process in Contractor Selection and Structural Audit

During the development and maintenance phases of a building, major decisions need to be taken to control its lifecycle. Not methodically inspecting old structures can lead to catastrophic failure, and picking a poor contractor can cause cost overruns and structural flaws. This study presents an integrated Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) framework with the use of the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) for two important processes, which are the selection of the building contractor and the evaluation of the priorities of the structural audit. We created two different hierarchical evaluation models. The structural audit model considers building distress signals like carbonation depth, fracture widths & Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV) variation as priority, while contractor selection model balances the financial bids against qualitative technical & safety indicators. The pairwise comparison matrices obtained from the data of the sector specialists were verified using the Consistency Ratio (CR) limitations. The results indicated the Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) results (42.4%) determine the priorities of structural audits, and the most important element in the selection of contractors is the technical expertise (39.1%). This paradigm of dual-application provides engineers and stakeholders with a rigorous, transparent decision-support system for asset management and structural safety improvement.