Decision making in highway construction: a systematic review and future directions
Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology
ISSN: 1726-0531
Article publication date: 1 September 2021
Issue publication date: 4 July 2023
Abstract
Purpose
Various approaches have emerged to assist practitioners in making more informed decisions in highway construction projects. However, industry practitioners are still using subjective ways to make decisions. Also, researchers have developed tools and techniques with similar objectives. Lack of information on what has been developed might lead to those issues. Therefore, this paper aims to review trends of evolution, pinpoint strengths and gaps in the literature and identifies potential future directions for decision-making research in highway construction projects.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic review was conducted on published articles on decision-making in highway construction projects using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) technique.
Findings
The analysis of 101 articles revealed that existing decision-making research in highway construction projects targets improvements in four areas: feasibility, conceptual, detailed scope and detailed design. The four areas consist of sixteen subthemes that are detailed in this study. In addition, most research involved developing decision support tools and systems as well as decision-making models, techniques and frameworks. Lastly, several research areas have emerged, such as adding more decision criteria including those with uncertainties, expanding existing decision-making models into decision support systems, benchmarking decision criteria between different sample populations and exploring inter-and intra-relationships between decision criteria.
Originality/value
This paper provides an overview of existing research on decision-making in highway construction projects. Also, it reveals research gaps in the body of knowledge to point out directions for future research. Finally, industry practitioners can use the findings to develop strategies for effective decision-making processes.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by Universiti Malaysia Pahang [RDU190340]. The authors would like to thank the editors and anonymous reviewers whose invaluable comments and suggestions substantially helped improve the paper’s quality.
Citation
Radzi, A.R., Rahman, R.A. and Doh, S.I. (2023), "Decision making in highway construction: a systematic review and future directions", Journal of Engineering, Design and Technology, Vol. 21 No. 4, pp. 1083-1106. https://doi.org/10.1108/JEDT-06-2021-0306
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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