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This dissertation, Incorporating Fuzzy Membership Functions and Gap Analysis Concept Into Performance Evaluation of Engineering Consultants: Hong Kong Study by Lai-kit, Chow, 周禮傑, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: - Abstract - of Thesis Entitled Incorporating Fuzzy Membership Functions and Gap Analysis Concept into Performance Evaluation of Engineering Consultants - Hong Kong Study Submitted by Chow Lai Kit For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in October 2005 Engineering Consultants (consultants) play a vital role in construction projects from their inception to completion. Consultants should therefore only be engaged after careful consideration to determine whether they are capable of providing an efficient and effective service. Consultant prequalification is an essential part of this process, which identifies capable candidates before they are invited to submit their technical and fee proposals for a consultancy assignment. However, many clients have their own criteria and emphases, and this could result in discrepancies in prequalification decisions. In this thesis, a comprehensive set of prequalification criteria and weightings is identified and a universal prequalification framework is devised to make the evaluation more transparent. Past performance records normally provide the most reliable information for predicting the future performance of consultants. In order to gather a systematic body of past performance information, Consultant Performance Evaluation (CPE) is exercised throughout the entire project duration by major iclients. It would be useful to exchange the past performance data among different clients to gain a broader view of consultants' performance. However, as individual clients perform CPE against their own criteria and emphases, the sharing of performance information may produce inconsistent evaluation results. The study therefore compiles a comprehensive set of CPE criteria and weightings and establishes a unified CPE framework to enable a common platform for the compilation of an integrated CPE data repository to be developed. Without a systematic evaluation guideline, the performance of consultants is likely to be gauged against assessors' subjective interpretations of each CPE criterion, and this tends to be qualitative in nature rather than evidence-based. In order to improve the objectiveness of evaluation through quantitative assessment, a set of Quantitative Indicators (QIs) pertinent to each CPE criterion at the design stage is established. Nevertheless, the QIs still require assessors' own value judgment to distinguish what is 'good' or 'bad'. It would be desirable to clearly define the Quantitative Requirements (QRs) of each QI originally designed for describing different performance levels of consultants. Fuzzy set concept is therefore adopted in this study to encapsulate the fuzzy ranges for QRs pertinent to each QI according to different performance levels. Many researchers are of the view that the satisfaction of clients' original expectations is one of the key factors in gauging the quality of service delivery. Furthermore, different clients have different expectations on each QI for projects of different scales and complexities. To improve the satisfaction of clients' expectation and enhance the flexibility of the CPE framework, the divergence between clients' original expectation and final perception (gap) should be considered in the CPE evaluation framework. A novel app

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