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20 Int. J. Data Analysis Techniques and Strategies, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2013

Copyright 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Multicriteria decision analysis in programmemanagement: evaluation of education infrastructureprojects using the AHP

Christophoros C. Triantafyllidis*

Project Management Unit,

Intermediate Management Authority,

Region of Central Macedonia,

Leoforos Georgikis Scholis 65,

57001, Pylea, Thessaloniki, Greece

E-mail: [email protected]*Corresponding author

Jason Papathanasiou

Department of Marketing and Operations Management,

University of Macedonia,

Agiou Dimitriou 49, 58200, Edessa, Greece

E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract: The fourth programming document for Greece through the years20072013 includes five Regional Operational Programmes (ROPs). One ofthem is the ROP of Macedonia Thrace. The priority axis seven description

is sustainable development and quality of life in the Central MacedoniaRegion and one of its goals is the construction and renewal of school buildingsin the Region of Central Macedonia. The current evaluation system is brieflypresented in this paper. What is attempted next is the order of importance ofthe criteria under question, according to the analytic hierarchy process (AHP)method demands, and the possibility of ranking the actions as a result of themethod implementation. In this paper, we use the Expert Choice software, tostudy the effects in the final score which will bring the indifferences betweenthe evaluation criteria. The whole approach aims at the optimisation of anysingle project selections method.

Keywords: multicriteria decision making; programme management; PgM;analytic hierarchy process; AHP; National Strategic Reference Framework;NSRF; criteria evaluation.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Triantafyllidis, C.C. andPapathanasiou, J. (2013) Multicriteria decision analysis in programmemanagement: evaluation of education infrastructure projects using the AHP,Int. J. Data Analysis Techniques and Strategies, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp.2037.

Biographical notes:Christophoros C. Triantafyllidis is a Civil Engineer andPhD candidate in the Constraction Equipment and Project OrganisationLaboratory of Civil Engineering department in the Aristotle Universityof Thessaloniki (A.U.Th.). He is working since 2007, alongside with theProject/Programme Management Unit of the Intermediary Managing Authorityof the Region of Central Macedonia. He is managing the Research andtechnical development infrastructures, Integrated projects of urban and rural


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Multicriteria decision analysis in programme management 21

regeneration and Education infrastructure programmes, which are parts

of the regional operational programme for the Region of Central Macedonia,in the National Reference Strategic Framework (20072013). His scientificareas of interest include construction project and programme management,multicriteria decision making techniques and decision support systemsapplicable to them.

Jason Papathanasiou is a full time Lecturer at the department of Marketing andOperations Management, University of Macedonia, Greece. He holds a PhD inOperational Research and Informatics and a degree in Physics, both from theAristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece. In the past he has worked as anExternal Lecturer at the Technical Institute of Technology in Thessaloniki andon the University of Western Macedonia teaching various courses. He has alsoparticipated in a number of national and EU funded (under FrameworkProgrammes 6 and 7) projects and has published his work in severalinternational scientific peer refereed journals and international conferences andworkshops.

This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitledMulticriteria decision analysis in programme management: evaluation ofeducation infrastructure projects using the AHP presented at the 7th Meetingof Multicriteria Decision Analysis, Orestiada, Greece, 30 September to2 October 2010.

1 Introduction

The present paper illustrates the assessment system used for the purpose of incorporatingeducational infrastructure projects in the Macedonia-Thrace Operational Programme

(OP) in Greece which runs under the context of National Strategic Reference Framework

(NSRF, www.espa.gr). Firstly, project management (PM) as a concept is presented and

then the rationale of the OP management, of the priority axis (PA) and the thematic

priorities (TP) that constitute them is developed.

The TP represent the allocated programmes grouped under the PA of the overall OP;

the PA are the basic components of the strategy of an OP. The purpose of the

similar projects, the programme of a TP includes, is to conduce to the achievement of its

aims as set during the specialisation of the OP. The targets of a TP are considered to be

achieved when the absorption of all the resources allocated to it is ensured and at the

same time a substantial number of deliverables is successfully submitted. In order for the

aims of a TP to be realised, the projects to be placed in the programme should be as

ready as possible and the institutions that propose and carry them out should be asadequate as possible.

The procedure according to which the projects of the programme (as the TP will be

called for reasons of convenience from now on) is called Project/Action Assessment

and this is the first step for the successful completion of a TP. As anticipated by

the guide of the Management and Control System of the OPs (www.espa.gr) the

procedure for the action assessment is a multicriteria procedure, which however is not

met with some of the well-known methodologies of the multicriteria decision making

discipline.


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22 C.C. Triantafyllidis and J. Papathanasiou

Table 1 Central Macedonia ROP 20072013

Central Macedonia ROP 20072013

Priority axes/Thematic priorities (Priority codes)

PA 01. Infrastructures and access services in the RCM

TP Title/Description

17 Railways (TEN-T)

20 Motorways

21 Motorways (TEN-T)

23 Regional/local roads

30 Ports

PA 04. Digital convergence and entrepreneurship in the RCM

TP Title/Description2 R&TD infrastructure (including physical plant, instrumentation and high-speed computer

networks linking research centres) and centres of competence in a specific technology

9 Other measures to stimulate research and innovation and entrepreneurship

PA 07. Sustainable development and quality of life in the RCM


44 Management of household and industrial waste

45 Management and distribution of water (drinking water)

48 Integrated prevention and pollution control

49 Mitigation and adaptation to climate change

50 Rehabilitation of industrial sites and contaminated land

51 Promotion of biodiversity and nature protection (including Natura 2000)52 Promotion of clean urban transport

53Risk prevention (including the drafting and implementation of plans and measures toprevent and manage natural and technological risks)

54 Other measures to preserve the environment and prevent risks

57 Assistance for improvement of tourism services

58 Protection and preservation of cultural heritage

59 Development of cultural infrastructure

60 Assistance for improvement of cultural services

61 Integrated projects for urban and rural regeneration

69

Measures to improve access to employment and increase sustainable participation andprogress of women in employment to reduce gender-based segregation in the labour

market, and to reconcile work and private life, such as facilitating access to childcare andcare for dependent persons

75 Education infrastructure

76 Health infrastructure

79 Other social infrastructure

PA 10.1 Technical assistance


85 Preparation, implementation, monitoring and inspection

86 Evaluation and studies, information and communication


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This paper attempts to explore the use of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method,

which constitutes one of the most widespread tools of the multicriteria decision making

discipline, in the assessment of the projects to be placed in the Educational Infrastructure

Programme of TP-75 of the Central Macedonian Regional Operational Programmes

(ROPs) 20072013 (Table 1).

A retrospection of Programme Management (PgM) and of the recent observations

of the related research is initially presented. What follows is an analysis of the

structure of the Axis OP and their TP with an emphasis on Educational Infrastructures

of the Region of Central Macedonia. The assessment system is described with

the proposed projects criteria as is currently valid, the AHP method is presented and

finally the above mentioned method is implemented through the use of Expert Choice

Software, so that the criteria participation set by the management and control system in

the final result of the selection of the projects to be placed in the programme are

specified.

2 Programme management

Programme management is a continually evolving scientific field, which resulted from

the need of entities, such as private sector corporations, public sector institutions and

others to group and centrally manage similar projects, so that the best possible benefit

from their implementation is achieved. International standards such as the PMI (Project

Management Institute) standard for PgM under its second edition already, have been

published about PgM as well as guides, such as the APM (Association for Project

Management) introduction to PgM and books depicting the field developments through

theoretical approaches and through applications in the everyday practices of an institution

(OGC, 2007; PMI, 2008; APM, 2007). The relative scientific research is productive

enough as well (Brown, 2008; Reiss et al., 2006; Sanghera, 2008; Milosevic et al., 2007;

Murray-Webster and Thiry, 2000). The differences between PM and the procedures of

PgM were revealed with the evolution of the PM field. Therefore, PgM differs with PM

in that PgM does not only concern the set of projects constituting a programme, but it

also enters into subjects that appear in the interface of the projects included in the

programme. Such issues relate to risk management referring to the programme

development, meaning the possibility the development of one or more of the tasks of the

project endangering the feasibility of the final goal, or with the firm establishment of the

programme demands and standards to be followed, as for example an integrated system

of technical and financial information flows from each project to the project manager

(Prieto, 2008).The differences between a project and a programme, according to Pellegrinelli (1997)

are that the programme does not usually have a precisely set of completion schedule, is

linearly developed in line with the institution demands (it can add or subtract projects

according to the demands each time), requires the management of multiple projects to be

delivered, focuses on the achievement of strategic goals not only for a specific product

and its manager is in charge of and coordinates the actions of the separate project

managers.

The features of a programme are the following:


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a In a programme tasks not included in each separate project can be subsumed. In a

settlement construction programme for instance, most tasks relate to the constructionof buildings, but there are other activities that fall into the programme as well, such

as road asphalting, tree plantings and so on.

b The programme constitutes a means of fulfilment of the strategic goals of the

institution that forms it: the good completion of the projects of the TP that belong to

a broader OP also means the achievement of the set of its goals, which is the

absorption of the funds with a simultaneous creation of the infrastructures or actions

that have been set.

c A project that is placed in a programme can bring a substantial benefit on its own,

but it also cumulatively contributes to the total benefit of the programme.

The object of PgM nowadays has largely evolved on the grounds of industrial,

telecommunications, informatics and defence projects (Lycett et al., 2004; Pellegrinelli,2011; Artto et al., 2009; Thiry, 2002, 2004) while the bibliography concerning the

Construction PgM is less expansive (Thomsen, 2008; Shehu and Akintove, 2009).

Despite the relatively small participation it has been proved that the PM methodologies

can be expanded to programmes concerning construction projects and the exploration of

the implementation of its different parameters, such as the organisation, the execution of

the planning the technical standards and requirements, the participants involvement, the

specification of the items to be delivered and so on would be interesting.

If, as stated above, the relating research on matters of construction PM is not

particularly extensive, the bibliography relating to OPs is even smaller. More precisely

Mavrotas et al. (2005) dealt with the cash-flow prediction models in OPs with emphasis

on Information Society which referred to informatics actions, while Ipsilandis et al.

(2008) researched on the evaluation of an OP through the use of MUSA multicriteriamethod. These works were based upon the OPs of the third managing period 20002006.

Today we are going through the fourth programme period for Greece, which is widely

known as NSRF, 20072013 or ESPA from the Greek alphabet initials. The way the

OPs are structured will be dealt with in the following chapter.

3 Operational programmes of the 20072013 period (NSRF) the CentralMacedonia ROP

An OP generally constitutes the specialisation document of the development strategy

of Greece by using a set of axis and TP that act as sub-programmes. The OP

NSRF, 20072013 specifically constitutes the document referring to the

programming of the EU. Financial funds, which are going to co-finance actions

and projects that were proposed to the Ministry of Finance by social

and financial partners, regional and peripheral operators and various ministries

(http://www.espa.gr/en/Pages/staticWhatIsESPA).

The operators proposals were under public discussion, which took place through four

national developmental conferences and which led to the configuration of the NSRF

20072013 together with the actions and the political choices in national and European

level and the studies and the quantitative items that were carried out.


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According to the NSRF document the strategic planning of the country for the period

20072013 will be specialised in eight sectoral OPs, which will be carried out by

ministries, five ROP, that will be executed in the limits of the territorial units of the five

regions of the country, and 12 programmes of territorial cooperation.

The ROP are the following:

1 Macedonia-Thrace

2 Western Greece-Peloponnesus-Ionian Islands

3 Crete-Southern Aegean

4 Thessalia Sterea Ellada Ipiros

5 Attikis.

The suggested interventions for each ROP are differentiated based on the fact that each

region belongs to a different category. So, it is suggestively referred that the region of

Central Macedonia, which is a part of the wider region of Macedonia-Thrace, falls into

the target of Convergence-Intermediary support-phasing out, where EU regions with a

lower per capita income GNP than the average 75% of the EU 15 GNP are included, the

region of Peloponnesus (today called Western Greece-Peloponnesus-Southern Aegean)

with a GNP rate smaller than the 75% of the EU average and which belongs to the target

Convergence, while the region of Southern Aegean (today in the Region of

Crete-southern Aegean), which has a GNP per capita income larger than the 75% of

the EU 15 GNP and falls into the target Competitiveness and Employment

(http://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/policy/region/index_el.htm).

What is stated above shows that all the regions of the country do not sharethe same needs in actions and projects which are to be subsumed in ROPs. However,

according to the NSRF document which we referred above, all regions should

organise their projects in such a way so that a minimum degree of interventions (shared

body, as referred to in the document) is covered, such as social infrastructures, health

and social solidarity infrastructures, cultural actions, projects on improvement of

accessibility and of surrounding regional scale and the projects related to viable urban

evolution.

Focusing on the Macedonia-Thrace ROP 20072013, according to the formal

document it consists of three parts: the Eastern-Macedonia-Thrace OP, the Central

Macedonia OP and the Western Macedonia OP. The present research was conducted in

projects assessed according to the Management and Control System in the sub-sector

today of Central Macedonia. The Central Macedonian OP consists of four PA. According

to the terminology dictionary of the NSRF a PA is a priority of the strategy in thecontext of an OP that has specific measurable targets and includes a group of actions

relating to one another (http://www.espa.gr/el/Pages/Dictionary in Greek). If

we attempt to interpret the above definition, we can conclude that all PA comprise the

hyper-programmes which comprise the OP and the action groups or the

TP where action in the NSRF terminology means project comprise the partial

programmes which conduce to the OP target achievement through their adequate

selection of projects.

The PA of the Central Macedonian ROP were named as follows:


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1 PA-1 Infrastructures and Accessibility Services in CMR

2 PA-2 Digital Convergence and Enterpreneurship in CMR

3 PA-3 Viable Evolution and Quality of Life in CMR

4 PA-4 Technical Application Support in CMR.

The four in all PA are specialised in 89 overall intervention categories or TP, to which

there was an earlier mention. Each TP groups projects and actions of a similar nature.

So, the differentiation of the projects of each TP takes place according to their kind

(construction road projects, cultural actions and so on) and not according to their

geographical and spatial distribution. The TP that was the sample for the object of the

present assignment is the TP-75 entitled Educational Infrastructures, which belongs to

PA-3 Viable Evolution and Quality of Life in CMR (Table 1).According to the extract of the programme that concerns the CMR the targets set in

the field of the Educational Infrastructures for Central Macedonia deal with the

improvement of the existing infrastructures and the creation of a new building reserve in

the sectors of primary, secondary and tertiary education and also in the sector of

vocational education and lifelong learning, the improvement of the technical education

infrastructures and finally the formation of libraries and laboratories and the networking

of educational units. For this reason there was a predicted amount of 119.5 million for

the specific programme (Educational Infrastructures).

The action management of the OP Macedonia-Thrace that concern Central

Macedonia has been assigned to the Intermediary Managing Authority (IMA) of CMR.

The IMA CMR is a service that was introduced after a Joint Ministerial Decision of the

Internal Affairs Minister and the Minister of Finance and constitutes the managingoperator of the programme, which directly comes under the General Secretary of the

Central Macedonian Region. Actions fulfilled in the administrative limits of the Central

Macedonian region in the programming period 20072013 are assigned in IMA CMR.

The IMA CMR consists of five units according to Figure 1 and described below:

1 the A1 Unit, which is responsible for the scheduling and assessment of the sum of

the ROP for Central Macedonia

2 the A2 Unit, which has the duties of Scheduling and Assessment of the

actions/projects that are proposed to be subsumed in the TP of ROP by the

competent body

3 the B Unit, which monitors and manages the subsumed actions in each TP

4 the C Unit, which carries out pre assessment controls and on-the-spot checking of the

executed projects and

5 the D Unit, which bears supportive and organisational duties.


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Figure 1 Central Macedonia Region IMA organisational structure(see online versionfor colours)

Source From http://www.pepkm.gr/

4 Methodology for action assessment for programme incorporation

After the creation of IMA CMR for the purpose of managing and controlling of the

Central Macedonian ROP and after the definition of the PA and the intervention

categories that have previously been mentioned, the IMA CMR asks from the Ministry of

Finance via a document the allocation of the amount that is anticipated by the programme

for each TP.

Concerning the case examined in the present research, after the allocation of a

specific amount by the Ministry of Finance for the TP-75 (Educational Infrastructures in

CMR), the A2 Unit of the IMA releases and publicises an invitation to all potential

beneficiaries for the submission of proposals. Potential beneficiaries are the operators

with a responsibility to execute the programme projects of the TP-75, for the pre-schooleducation projects and for primary and secondary education projects, for example.

Responsible operators for their construction are the CMR municipalities and prefectures.

Following the information and documentary that are published in the IMA CMR

website (www.pepkm.gr) and are accessible to every interesting part, the beneficiaries

submit their proposals, which should be assessed and judged in standard time limits to

see if they are suitable for programme incorporation. In case the available budget of the

Invitation is exhausted the invitation closes and no extra proposal is admitted (there is

always an overbooking margin of about 10% of the originally disposed budget).

According to the Management and Auditing of Part-Financing Projects Guide, 2nd

edition (2010, in Greek), the assessment procedure is carried out by a three-member

committee of the ROP CMR and has as the person in charge one of the A2 staff for the

action assessment and members of the B (Management and Control) and C (on-the-spotVerifications) units staff in the role of advisors. The assessment procedure is described in

detail in the second edition of the management and control guiding system of the NSRF

as well as in the relating supportive archives (check lists).

Briefly, the assessment is initially based upon the examination of the thoroughness of

the details of the examined proposals (technical data sheets, managing adequacy of the

beneficiary, standard accompanying documents, existence of studies, etc.) and the

comparative assessment is the next stage. The comparative assessment of the proposals is

based on the following group of criteria:


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1 criteria concerning the thoroughness and clarity of the proposal, such as the

thoroughness and clarity of the description, the extensionality of the schedule andbudget

2 criteria concerning the observance of the national and the community rules

concerning the works contract, studies, provisions and services referring to the

environment, the promotion of equal opportunities, the accessibility of disabled

people and so on

3 criteria concerning the purposefulness of the action, such as its contribution to the

achievement of the Programme targets, its efficiency, its synergy and its

complementarity to other actions and so on

4 criteria concerning the maturity of the action referring to the level of readiness of the

studies and the managing actions required (the issuing of a licence etc).

According to the above mentioned guide of the management and control system, the steps

followed during the assessment of an action (project) are the following:

Step 1 analysis, specialisation and adjustment of the selection criteria

Step 2 definition of the way of assessing the criteria, which takes place on the grounds

of the following practices:

1 binary grading (Yes/No)

2 exclusion on the basis of the criteria (all criteria need to take Yes as an

answer for eligibility)

3 quantification of the prices Yes/No

4 grading of some of the criteria and institution of the limits for positiveassessment after each criterion or group of criteria

5 calculating factors after each criterion

6 through whichever of the above combinations.

Step 3 way of combining the grading on a level of criteria and the extraction of the

final conclusion of the assessment.

More analytically:

It is determined per level of the category of the criteria which and how many should

in an obligatory manner take positive grading, when the binary grading system is

used (Yes/No)

In the case that multiple grading is used for some of the criteria the limit should be

defined according to which it will be compared to the synthesis of the prices and the

criteria that allow of multiple prices, for instance exclusion of proposals with a grade

under 65% of the highest marked proposal. A proposal is positively assessed when it

is positively assessed or above the threshold of all categories of criteria.

At the end of the comparative assessment a proposal gets a grade as a synthesis of the

grading of the partial categories, that is the completeness, the observance of the national

and community rules, the purposefulness and the maturity of the project to be proposed.


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In the case that the project under assessment is positively judged and with the

provision that there is an available budget from the invitation, then the subsumption

procedure of the action (project) in the programme begins.

5 The AHP method and the Expert Choice

Software

The methodology used for the specific application is the AHP, which one of the most

widespread and cited in bibliography methods in the field of the multicriteria decision

making (Saaty, 1994; Forman and Gass, 2001; Vaidya and Kumar, 2006; Dolan, 2008;

Abu Zarhan, 2011), despite its severe criticism from time to time (Belton and Stewart,

2002; Bana e Costa and Vansnick, 2008). AHP is based upon the hierarchical structure of

the elements in the decision making process and in the expression of the preferences of

the decision makers through binary comparisons. The solution of a problem following theAHP method has four stages (Bhushan and Rai, 2004):

1 the hierarchical structure of the problem

2 the gathering of the decision makers preferences on relation to criteria, sub-criteria

and alternatives

3 the estimation of the relative priorities of the decision elements

4 the combination of the priorities (weights) that lead to the assessment of the

alternatives.

The preferences of the decision makers are expressed with the use of a nine point scale,

with a fluctuation of the preferences from 1, which indicates the equal preference among

alternatives, up to 9, which indicates the complete prevalence of one of the twoalternatives. In-between rates in the climax indicate the shadings of the preferences, while

fractional rates are related to converse preferences. In each phase of the pair of

comparisons the consistency index C1 is estimated, which indicates the inconsistency of

the preferences and the stability of the estimations that have been made. The calculation

of the C1 index is based on the finding of the main eigenvalues of the records created in

the binary comparisons. As consistent are considered those judgements that decide if

the C1 is lower than 10% (0.1).

The software used in the specific assignment is Expert Choice

ver.11

(www.expertchoice.com), which constitutes a system supporting the analysis, synthesis

and the support of a multiple criteria decision. Through this software the possibility of

three different ways of expressing comparisons is made possible:

1 importance, when the criteria are compared to one another

2 preference, when alternative solutions are compared

3 possibility, when result possibilities are compared.

Depending on the criteria and the alternative types, the comparisons can also be verbal,

graphical or numerical. The software gives us the chance to exchange data through

their incorporation in Microsoft Access or SQL server databases and the support of SQL

models (Triantafyllidis et al., 2007).


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6 The AHP Method application in the assessment criteria of the CMR

projects of the Programme

The object of the present research is the exploration of the significance of the criteria

used for the incorporation of the projects in the programme Educational Infrastructures

(TP-75) of the Central Macedonian ROP. In this way we attempt to homogenise the

criteria and to use them in a unified manner in contrast to the complex way of the

comparative assessment used today.

For the above reason the AHP method was applied with the use of the Expert Choice

and the problem was structured in three levels:

1 the first level concerns the purpose of the research and deals with the definition of

the weights with which the groups of criteria participate in the final assessment

2 the second level concerns the groups of criteria according to the managing andcontrol system

3 the third level concerns the partially examined criteria per group.

The three levels of the method are shown in the following diagram as it comes out of the

Expert Choice

software (Figure 2).

Figure 2 Assessment criteria for project selection (see online version for colours)

The goal is to find the weight of the criteria for the final assessment of the actions; this is

pictured at the first level. At the second level the four groups of the criteria are examined

and from each group the partial criteria for the selection of the action are branched.

The way the importance of the criteria was signified took place through the

combination of the opinions of the experienced members of the ROP CMR. The grading

followed the nine-point scale (from 1 to 9) and its results were entered in the software


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and experienced members of the ROP CMR staff with a long service in the field of the

management of OPs participated in the formation of preferences.

The table that resulted for the basic group of the criteria (second level), where the

thoroughness and the clarity of the project, the observance of the national and European

Law, the project utility and maturity (Figure 2) is as follows. In this table we observe that

the the observance of the national and European Law is deemed a little more important

than the thoroughness and clarity of the project. In particular it is graded with a 2.0,

which is depicted with red in the table resulting from the software. Following the same

train of thought the comparative grading of the rest of the criteria was set. As shown in

the table, the the project utility was deemed of the same importance with the

observance of the national and the European Law as well as the project maturity with

a result the grade put in the relevant cells to be 1.0.

Figure 3 Basic group of criteria comparison table (see online version for colours)

In a similar manner the comparison records and the criteria for each distinct group were

formed. In the following schema the record for the group Project Utility appears.

Figure 4 Third level criteria comparison table (as of project utility) (see online versionfor colours)

In all the tables the inconsistency index C1 appears with the indication Incon. So, we

observe that in the Figure 3 with the groups of criteria C1 equals with 0.01, while in the

relevant table with the criteria of the group Project Utility the index is zero (0.00,

Figure 4). This means that the estimations of the members of the staff that contributed in

the exploration of the assessment criteria is are in general very reliable, as C1 is much

lower than the limit of consistency set by the AHP method as 0.10.

After the completion of the procedure the table in Figure 5 is produced with the final

weights of the groups of categories as well as the partial criteria composing those results.


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Figure 5 Final results of criteria weights (see online version for colours)

After examining the results, we observe that the greatest importance in the final grading

of the assessment of the projects to be incorporated in the programme is the

Project Maturity with a weight contributor of 0.312. In this group greater influence and

thus importance was deemed to have the criterion of the maturity of the study of the

project with a weight contributor 0.800.

Figure 6 Ideal mode of AHP(see online version for colours)


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The whole picture and the influence of the totality of the partial criteria in the final

decision appears in the following table, where the inconsistency index C1 = 0.01 of the

application in the ideal mode of the AHP method (Figure 6), where the order of the

weight of the criteria is maintained as well as in the distributive mode (Figure 7), where

the reversion of the order of weights is permitted.

Figure 7 Distributive mode of AHP (see online version for colours)

The Expert Choice software enables the application of a sensitivity analysis in the

results. There is an ease for the depiction of many types, such as Performance,Dynamic, Gradient, Head to Head, 2D etc. If we choose the Dynamic

presentation, the following table is the result (Figure 8).

Figure 8 Sensitivity analysis: dynamic presentation (see online version for colours)


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If we alter the prices in the group of priorities, the weights of the partial criteria change

too, and we may observe that if, for example, balance the group weights so that theyall have the price of 0.25, then the partial weights keep the greatest importance the

Project Maturity and Contribution of the proposed project into the programme

objectives, whereas the Rationality of Project Budget that falls short in importance

compared to Observance of Public Project, Design and Procurements Legislation

(weight of 0.069 as opposed to 0.119), obtains now more impact to the final result

(weight of 0.135 as opposed to 0.106, Figure 9)

Figure 9 Balancing the basic group weights (see online version for colours)

7 Conclusions drawn from the application of the method-future prospects

The application of the AHP in the determination of the assessment criteria weights led to

the drawing of conclusions that could assist in the assessment procedure of the projects to

be incorporated in the programme of schools construction in the Central Macedonian

Region. So, the homogenisation and quantification of the criteria participating in the

assessment of the proposed for an incorporation project is thus observed. In this way the

synthesis of a different type of grading currently used in the comparative projectassessment is avoided.

The estimation of the final score of each proposal is made easier by the deduction of

set weights for each criterion. This conclusion can be proven right with the following

example: If for each group of criteria the ultimate grade is 100, then the participation

weights multiplied with the grade of each group and then added give the final score of the

project, as shown in the following tables. If we put in the table the four main groups of

criteria of the application, we observe what is shown in the Table 2:


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Table 2 Final score estimation

Rate Criterium Weight Final score

Thoroughness and Clarity of Project 90 0.128 11.52

Observance of the Legislation 75 0.348 26.1

Project Utility 90 0.142 12.78

Project Maturity 70 0.383 26.81

77.21

We observe that despite the different grading of the groups, their combination with the

criteria weights as they were drawn from the application, gives the final result of 77.21. If

we estimate the average of the gradings, it is 81.25. This indicates that if the importance

of the criteria is introduced in the final assessment, the result can be influenced and in

every case a more realistic estimation of the assessment of the proposed projects is

given. In the same manner a comparison and evaluation of the influence of the

sub-criteria of each group in the estimation of the final result can be made.

The checking of the stability of the subjective selections of the participants in the

determination of the partial weights of the criteria-alternatives is made direct with the

use of the AHP Method and is made with the inspection of the consistency indexes C1

that result in each stage of the binary comparisons of the criteria.

With the application of the sensitivity analysis the prices that can influence and

change significantly the result can be found.

After the application made in the present assignment a serious importance in the

maturity of the proposed project resulted, which in turn means high quality studies and

the existence of the proper licence giving for the construction of the project, as theconstruction licence, the excavation licence, environmental licences etc.

We also observe that the purposefulness of the project as well as the observance of

the national and communal legislation play a serious part, while the contribution of the

thoroughness and clarity of the proposal places particular emphasis in the proper laying

out of the budget and the schedule of the project.

Final conclusions

In this assignment we attempted to explore the possibility of attributing the shadings in

the assessment process of the projects of school construction that are proposed to be

incorporated in the ROP CMR in the NSRF boundaries, so that the procedure is made the

most precise and fair possible for all participants.The use of the AHP method gave results that could be deemed as satisfactory and to

be the first cause of further research on the issue of the procedure of the assessment of

projects, which constitutes a basic prerequisite for the proper future management of the

programme that they will participate. The multicriteria decision making discipline offers

a quite large array of other methodologies as well that could contribute to this direction.


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