A Multi-Criteria Decision Support Model for Selecting Sustainable Construction Projects

The construction industry is increasingly pressured to align project selection with long-term organizational strategies and global sustainability requirements. Traditional project selection methods focus on project-specific success criteria such as time and cost rather than organizational benefits and sustainability benefits. This paper proposes a comprehensive project selection model that integrates sustainability, organizational benefit realization and project success. Twenty-six criteria were selected based on a literature review. Sixteen criteria belong to the Sustainability group, divided into three categories: environmental, economic and social criteria. Ten criteria belong to the second group, consisting of the organizational benefit realization category and the project success category. The weights of these criteria were calculated using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based on a survey of 34 construction experts in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The results show a paradigm shift, with the Sustainability group carrying a higher global weight (0.537) compared to the second group of organizational benefits and project success criteria, with a weight of 0.463. The main criteria are found to be Energy Use, Profitability and Strategic Fit. The proposed project selection model offers a solution for this complex decision-making process. By combining the Project Screening Matrix (PSM) with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), the model provides a two-layered approach: an initial screening of a large project pool followed by a rigorous final selection. A case study is presented to highlight the application of this model. The proposed model provides clients, government entities and private developers with a decision-making tool that improves their selection processes. This research fills the literature gap, as the proposed model integrates sustainability with the traditional criteria used in project selection.