Negotiation throughout flexible and interactive tradeoffs applied to construction procurement

• Published in: Automation in construction 2019-03, Vol.99, p.39-51
• Main Author: Palha, Rachel Perez
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: BATNA; Construction industry; Construction procurement; Expanding the pie; FITradeoff; GDN; Mediation; Model testing; Negotiation; Procurement; Subcontractors
• ISSN: 0926-5805; 1872-7891
• DOI: 10.1016/j.autcon.2018.12.002

A model for e-negotiation in a typical procurement process in the construction industry is presented. The greatest contribution of this paper is a novel model for e-negotiation using an adaptation of the FITradeoff method for group decision and negotiation with an unbiased mediator agent so as to reduce the number of interactions needed to reach an agreement. The elicitation process included within the negotiation model sees to it that the cognitive effort that the negotiators need to make is reduced because partial information and strict preference statements can be used. The mediator agent facilitates the negotiation phase, thereby allowing a general contractor to compare subcontractors and to decide if there should be a 1–1 or 1-N negotiation process. Moreover, this agent conducts the negotiation process and presents the best and suboptimal agreements to the negotiators. A prototype was built to test the model using data from a real construction project. •Supports and automate negotiation in Procurement for the Construction Industry•Presents a novel model of a platform to negotiate with subcontractors•The platform enables the assessment of tradeoffs with partial information.•An unbiased mediator agent guides the parties to reduce the time of the negotiation.•The main contractor might compare the same negotiation with different suppliers.